Monday Plus (14 Nov) - The Statue Monster

Monday Plus (14 Nov) - The Statue Monster

Fist portal hopped back to Org Monday. She was swamped with Pandaria leather crafting stuff and Mery was complaining about all the junk Fist was sending to her. Fist had to break the logjam with leveling her leather working skills, and rugged leather was still in short supply. Fist came upon an idea involving the Onyxia raid. The tunnel leading from the portal entrance to the dragon Onyxia is patrolled by four level 80 elite dragonkin. These special dragons yield 10-20 rugged leather with each kill. Fist, at level 86 and in Pandaren gear, was more than a match for them. Fist killed the four elites and reset the raid dungeon the max five times. When she was done she had more rugged leather than she needed. Oh, by the way, Mery was invited, too, so that Fist could turn the group of two into a raid. Mery never left Org, though, letting Fist have all the fun. Mery just wanted some bag space back.

Fist then ran into yet another obstacle. She had plenty of leather for the next round of crafting. But skill level 240-250 required another mat called fel scales. Not many beasts drop this mat, and those beasts were all in Outland's Blade's Edge. Since the scales cost more than 10g each on the AH, Fist went out to farm the Shard-Head boars that sometimes dropped them when skinned. It took awhile, but Fist finally got enough. More crafting, and now Fist is stuck looking for borean and heavy borean leather. Fist has raised her leather working skill to 385 now, ten skill points ahead of Mery. Mery is considering dropping her own leather working skills and is looking at what she might replace it with. JB, Philly, and Wild already cover most of the main professions: Wild (Tailoring, Enchanting), JB (Alchemy, Herbalism), and Philly (Inscription, Jewelcrafting). Naithipe is into Blacksmithing and Mining, but isn't much further along with those than Mery was at leatherworking. The only profession the family done little more than dabble in is Engineering, but that  doesn't much interest anyone. Well, Mery has plenty of time to think about it.

Thursday - Fist did little more than putter about for a couple of days, and then found some time on Thursday night to hammer out a few more quests. There were some interesting ones that required hunting down objects, which offered a change of pace from the usual kill quests.

The highlight, though, was the quest "Pei-Back." Pei-Zhi is a panda mystic who has been taken by the evil Shan Jitong. Fist is enlisted to rescue him. Shan Jitong is protected by a large stone statue monster, and Shan Jitong is immune to attack as long as the statue stands. Fist must kill the statue monster first. The statue monster is not elite, but it does have a huge amount of health, which it periodically regenerates. Additionally, Shan Jitong has a spell that separates Fist from her body, and Fist's spirit has to run back to her body. During the separation Fist is unable to attack the statue monster. Now, in the interest of full disclosure, I have to admit that I made the quest a lot harder than it should have been. Fist not only had to return her spirit to her body, she was supposed to click on the body as well. That click allowed Fist to resume attacking the statue monster, and it also stopped the statue from regenerating health. Fist didn't know that. She wasn't used to seeing the hand-thingy visual (which is a Pandaria thing). Fist let the statue monster take the full amount of time for regeneration, waiting to attack again once the spell expired. The only thing going in Fist's favor, was that even with the full period of regeneration, Fist was doing enough damage to - slowly - reduce the statue's health. The statue hit pretty hard, though, and Fist took considerable damage. She had to use all her protection and healing abilities to stay alive, and she got the "Warning: Low Health!" so many times she shut it off. She was down under 15% at one point in the fight.

Slowly ... eventually ... at 20% health ... Fist killed the statue monster. That drew in Shan Jitong, with Fist very low on health. It didn't matter. Shan Jitong was now attackable, and he went down before Fist finished her first round of attacks.

So, Fist did most everything wrong on this fight - but that's what made it so much fun and challenging!

Fist is now 50% of the way to level 87.