Running the Ranks

Running the Ranks
and Making Messes

Part One: Keya went from disgusted to elated Friday morning. Twelve hours prior she was struggling to find quests, having consumed everything the Broken Shores could offer, which was 62k quests that wasn't getting her very far. A new research item changed all that. As of Friday morning her 62k quests became 200k quests. Three world quests and six hundred thousand AP later, she had another rank under her blades. She now has just three ranks to go. The next rank she buys will cost 718k. Expect the last two to go over a million.

Keya has an i940 belt that has to be paid for before she can slot it. She needed 8,000 order resources (leaving her with only 300) to buy the second legendary slot. Keya wanted to slot it immediately, but no, there is a waiting period. She has to wait 24 hours before the slot becomes available. She has 15 hours to go.

Update: Keya has now equipped her i940 belt, complementing her i940 boots. She has completed every rank but one. Additionally, she made a special trip to earn a world quest, replacing an i825 Arcane relic with an i880 upgrade. Keya also came prepared to complete the third relic slot. She has in hand an i840 Fel relic (which replaces her i789). But Keya wasn't done. She went after a special elite, slaying the elite and earning almost 400k AP. That tipped the scales and she now has the AP to finish her relic.

Part Two: Keya thought this would be the easy part. All she had to do was slot the 34th and final rank, which then opens the extra 35th rank, which then opens the third relic slot.

HERE GOES!
Excited, Keya slotted the 34th rank. Success!
The 35th rank, Soulgorger, opened as well. Another success!
BOINK? Wait, that was a fail. She needs 1.6 million AP to actually use Soulgorger.
Well, the setback didn't stop her. She stomped back to the Broken Shores and came back with those 1.6 million AP. The 35th rank slotted. Success!
Then BOINK? Again. Keya expected to open the third relic slot. She has the Fel relic ready to go. But the relic slot stayed closed.

Part Three: Back to the drawing board. One possible issue could be her Order Hall campaign, which Keya paid little interest in. Unsure, she checked some quests at the Deliverance flight path where a lot of the details can be found. She found the quest "Investigating the Legion." This quest involves Mysterious Runebound Scrolls scattered throughout the Broken Shores. They have to be activated, but so far Keya hasn't figured out how to do that. There's a central one she has to get to, but no way has yet been found to reach it. She's stymied for the moment. Which means she still can't use her third relic. Which sucks. The other thing that sucks is that when the runebound scrolls popped up everywhere, the entire Broken Shores was blanketed with a blue screen. Us color blind folks have a hard time seeing through it! Which makes getting around even more difficult to traverse than it should. Which double sucks.

Part Four: This began as a very long tirade, but Sista and Chaitee wore themselves out worrying about the poor state of affairs regarding the Auction House. Suffice it to say that this is a very bad period in the market, free falling prices, and at the moment no one knows when it will end or what the new "normal" pricing will be. Chaitee is sitting on her dwindling nest egg and squeezing Sista for a few bags to keep things going. But they are in a pretty rough situation.

Part Five: Not sure what to make of this one. Each week Sista goes to the Bastion of Twilight raid and the Naxramas raid to scrounge crafting materials.  These two runs make up 80% of the mats used to make bags and other stuff to sell on the AH. These two raids simply don't change. Sista can do them in her sleep.

However, two weeks ago something changed with Bastion of Twilight. First off, things were normal for the opening segment of the raid, which Sista runs ten times, resetting the instance each time to max her gathering. On the tenth run, she clears the entire raid to pick up more goodies. The raid bosses are easily one shot. Even the final boss, who is supposed to rise from his throne and try to escape, dies before he leaves the chair.

Except that didn't happen this week. This week, the raid bosses fought back. It took 3-5 blows before the bosses fell. The final boss managed to crack the floor and fall (which is what happens in a normal raid), forcing Keya to fall with him in order to loot the guy. That shouldn't happen. I'm open to any ideas on this one. Sista's gear hasn't changed.

Perhaps Blizz made some under the table adjustments to BoT. There were also considerably fewer gathering materials on this last raid as well. In fact, she did not get any hypnotic dust from the BoT raid. None at all.Which has never happened.

Sista's other source of mats, the Maw of Madness (also in the Twilight Highlands) was working as usual. As a result, Sista is dropping BoT from her weekly run and just go to the Maw from now on.

Final Word: Things are a bit out of whack as noted above. Chaitee, Sista, Keya, and the rest of the family hope the next week will be better.

And yes, I'm done. For now.