Weekend (24 Oct) - Saddling Up

Weekend (24 Oct) - Saddling Up

Two plus days in chilly, rain and fog drenched weather in the California mountains might not be too many folks idea of a vacation, but we always enjoy these little getaways. We always stay at the same place, called Cottage in the Woods, and that's exactly what it is. We had our dog and two of the cats with us, and they got a kick out of watching the huge blue and black blue jays, the rabbits and squirrels, and on one night, a family of raccoons. We don't do a whole lot, but that's pretty much the point.

We got back on Friday afternoon, and I have to admit it was a bit of an effort to zone back into WoW and take up where the Wild family had left off. Happy and Lost got their time in game, of course, catching up on the doins' of the Auction House, which wasn't much. Gold is still being made, but there wasn't a lot of buying going on, even though it was the weekend.

Dungeon and raid action on Friday night was also muted. Wild had missed the ICC raids this past week, of course, and was in game for awhile considering catching on with a PUG ICC, but the couple of possible offerings didn't really appeal to him. While standing around chatting with the few guildies that were on, Wild did discover a change from the patch that had escaped his notice. Idols are special gear available only to some classes. They fit in a special slot and provide a select set of stats tailored for specific specs. Wild was going over his gear for the millionth time, but for the first time actually paid attention to his idols. They had changed. Instead of stats tailored to a spec, the idols had become more generic and almost identical between the moonkin and healing specs. They were the same with the exception that one had spirit on it, and the other had haste instead. Not only that, the idols now had a socket for a gem. Since spirit is used by the resto spec for mana regen, and by the moonkin spec for hit - both of which Wild already had more of than he needed - Wild chose the idol with the haste on it for use by both specs. A haste gem was also used in the single socket. Wild now has 959 haste rating, closing in on the magic number he is aiming at - 1015.

On Saturday Wild and Philly both checked in with the guild to see what was up. Our usual partner in crime, Bd, was going to be busy Saturday evening, and no one else had anything planned. Wild and company were on their own.

Well, Mery had a few things to do. She has been working on her Leatherworking skills and pushing to improve her gear. Sometimes the two tasks coincide, and Mery's improving skill as a leather worker was making recipes available that she would like to use for herself. One in particular, though, required that Mery learn Dragonscale Leatherworking. Specialty skills within a skill are going away once Cata arrives, and Mery would no longer have to learn that specialty. But right now, it's still required if Mery wants to wear the dragonscale gear.

Mery figured that since Wild and Philly weren't busy, she'd just monopolize the rest of the day ... and evening ... and maybe the rest of the weekend if she could get away with it. She needed more leather and some other less common materials, which meant farming and questing. She just needed to decide where to quest. Winterspring is a fun place to quest in, but it was just a little too high level for her. Azshara would work, but there was a lot of traveling involved with the quests there. Aha! I know, Mery exclaimed. Un'Goro Crater!

Marshall's Refuge in Un'Goro Crater is the main quest hub for both Horde and Alliance. The Crater is a hot, humid, watery domain of dinosaurs of all types, as well as mobile plants and other strange things. Wild had spent many days questing here, mostly in cat and bear forms. It was a grind back then because killing things in cat form was slow; but it was still fun. Mery got started, collecting a bunch of quests and then reliving the quests that Wild had done. It took Mery about four hours, counting breaks to empty her bags. She also leveled to 55.

Now Mery felt she was ready. There was a quest giver in the Badlands that offered the single quest required to learn Dragonscale leatherworking. Mery crafted four items that the quest required, and had also farmed the ten worn dragonscale that was also required. The Badlands was at about the midway point of the Eastern Continent. Mery had never been there, and so had never picked up the flight path in the Badlands at the outpost of Kargath (for Horde). Since Kargath was the linchpin that connected the flight paths between the north and south ends of the continent, there was no quick way to get to the Badlands from either direction.

No matter how many times that first trip to Kargath is made by various toons, I always have trouble remembering the specific route to take. For Mery's first trip, she decided to come at the Badlands from the North. Mery started at the Undercity, and was able to take a flight path to Hammerfall, the Horde outpost farthest south when coming from that direction. From Hammerfall Mery rode south to the great bridge and tunnel system that was built by the dwarves. Of course, it was also guarded by Alliance dwarves as well. Most of the defenders, though, are level 30 or below and weren't a problem for Mery to avoid, unless she was overwhelmed by sheer numbers. However, she had to delay her start across the bridge when a high level Alliance player showed up as Mery was approaching it. The allie hung around for a bit, and Mery figured he hoped to make Mery's trip more interesting by trying to bring more dwarvish guards and other hostiles into Mery's path. Mery did a little farming for skins and the allie soon got bored and left.

The trip across the bridges and tunnels is a little stressful mostly in trying to remember which direction to go and what tunnels to take. Mery did get sidetracked once, winding up in the tunnel leading into the Ironforge area. Mery had to backtrack, and finally found the mountain pass that led into the Badlands. It took a bit of scouting around, but Mery eventually found the quest giver she was looking for. And the quest giver had no quest to give. What a disappointment.

Mery was so annoyed she hearthed back to Thunder Bluff in disgust. All that effort. Mery even had a pair of very nice leggings she had crafted and planned to wear, but without the dragonscale specialty, she was unable to equip them.

I had a do a bit more digging to find out what was going on. Patch 4.0.1 did indeed remove the specialty requirement. Part of that removal meant taking away that quest in the Badlands. It no longer exists. However, there is a bug where some gear is still tagged as being a specialty item, and still requires the specialty. Mery has a piece of gear she should be able to wear, but because of the bug she can't. Other players have it worse, though. Players who had gotten the specialty before the patch and were wearing gear made through that specialty suddenly discovered that the gear they wore on the Monday before the patch, they could no longer wear on Tuesday after the patch. Ouch.

A Blizzard post and a bug report that took some research to find says that they are aware of the problem and plan to fix it - eventually. Oh, and Mery forgot to talk to the flight master at Kargath before hearthing out of the Badlands and will have to retrace that route a second time. Sigh.

Mery was tired and called it for the weekend. There was still minimal going on with the guild and even most of the players chatting on the Trade channel didn't seem all that enthusiastic about raiding. On Sunday Philly made an appearance to keep tabs on what was - or wasn't - going on. She also belatedly started getting serious about making a little gold from her Inscription profession. Philly posted last week that she planned to take advantage of the short window after the patch when the demand for glyphs (made by scribes trained in Inscription) would be in very high demand. Yet here she is, five days after the patch, and she's done almost nothing. Sure, she has gotten more consistent in doing the research to learn more glyph recipes, but she was not making or selling any glyphs except for family and friends. It was time to rectify that.

What had stymied her before was the effort it would take to go through every class of player and every glyph to determine what was selling, what was not, and then compare that with the glyphs she could or could not make. That took most of the morning on Sunday to do. Among hundreds of glyphs, Philly picked 60 glyphs that at first glance had potential for quick, high profits. She then did laborious further research to determine the best choices to start with. Philly had already stripped the Wild Family bare of herbs to use in crafting the materials used to create glyphs. She had a good stockpile, but there wasn't enough to make 60 glyphs. She eventually settled on 27 glyphs to make and post on the Auction House. Philly will monitor the results all next week.