Taking Stock and Taking Names

Taking Stock and Taking Names

Tiphaine picked up the daily "kill 100 beasts" quest, but this is Saturday and the beasts in the area of Wor'var were all tapped out. Well, Jocy had shown her how to get to the swamps, where there's an endless stream of dinosaurs, snakes, flying things, frogs, and the list could go on and on.

The swamps were deserted of all players except one hunter likely on the same quest. The hunter tangled with one of the elites in the swamp - a forest walker thing - and Tiphaine helped finish it off, getting her first fragmented crystal.

Consistent with Jocy's habit of picking up possible quest goodies, Tiphaine also rounded up the parts of the quest for the Night Haunter elite without paying too much attention to it. She had no interest in taking on the elite in her current gear state.

What happened next could have been avoided. The Night Haunter quest requires saving ten wounded soldiers. I forgot that on the tenth save the fight starts, like NOW. Tiphaine found herself fighting the Night Haunter. Tiphaine doesn't know the word "retreat." The battle went decently at the start, but as time went on her health couldn't keep up with the damage she was taking. Save me spells delayed what was becoming inevitable, so she attacked even more desperately, burning her runes in the hope getting back into the fight. The hunter eventually saw that there was another elite afoot and joined in the fight. It was close, but Tiphaine didn't last the whole battle, dying with the Haunter still above 30%.

Tiphaine is fast on her feet, though, and resurrected quickly. When she got back the Haunter was a corpse, but still bleeding and still twinkling, waiting for someone to take credit for the kill. Yes! She got her credit. You can bet she'll be more cautious the next time . . . oh, wait, this is Tiphaine we're talking about. The Night Haunter better be ready the next time Tiphaine wades into the swamps. She also received an i650 baleful shoulder that the War Mill helped upgrade to i675. It replaced an i591 and raised her overall ilevel to i630. Very Nice. And those two elite kills, even though she had help, were pretty sweet, too. Mock is 9,790/10,000, which is getting pretty close to reaching the second level.

[] Ever have one of those moments out of time? Tiphaine recalled getting her first death knight blade and the rune that she impressed on it. She had a sudden desire to go back to Ebon Hold and . . .  well, she wasn't sure why. There's no need for that now. It was just weird.

[] More weirdness followed. Tiphaine wondered why she didn't have a special spell that other classes have, like Wild's Mark of the Wild or Jocy's Blessing of Kings or Fist's Legacy of the White Tiger? Why doesn't death knights have something like that?

[] Well, they do, but no one in the family dared say anything out loud. Blood would be spilled if anyone let out that Tiphaine had forgotten the spell, and that it lay unused since her return from self-imposed exile. Oh so quietly the spell, Horn of Winter, appeared in her spell kit. As far as anyone would comment, it had always been there. 'Nuff said about that.

[] On a better note, Tiphaine took on the Rumble in the Jungle for the first time. She was the lone horde in a group of alliance. The group took no notice of her and she in return ignored them. Tiphaine helped kill the first and third bosses. They didn't do the second boss. No chance to solo the second boss, so she'll have to keep trying to horn in on another group to get that last boss.