Monday (3 Dec)- Pandaren Toys
Note - Oops, This should have been posted before the Auction House Post
Pandaria is crazy for toys. "Use" toys on trinkets are kind of cool, and Fist has several that she keeps around for no reason but to have fun with them. Then there are toys that are ... just toys. Here is a random sampling of toys that Fist has. She has Silversage Incense when she wants to meditate around a smelly stick of burning incense. Then there's the Golden Banana, which can be thrown at any person. It just sort of lays there, though. The coolest so far is the Hozen Idol. Target a critter and activate the idol - a yellow beam lances out to the critter for a few seconds - and then BOOM! the critter explodes. That's so much fun they had to put a 20 minute cooldown on it.
On Monday night I got back to back screen lockouts - after playing almost two hours straight - while Fist was actively battling mountain rams up in the mountains. How Fist managed not to die either time during the reboots amazed me. After the second crash I got another idea. I've wondered if there is a program running in the background that is setting it off, but I can't check on that since the game takes up the whole screen. Well, duh, why not run the game in a window instead of full screen?
When I play WoW, I want as much visual real estate as possible, so I always play in full screen mode. For trouble shooting, though, running WoW in a window allows me to have task manager running next to it so I can see what background programs are running, and I can see what activity is going on the next time the screen lockup occurs. I played for another hour with the game in windowed mode. There was no lockup. That doesn't tell me much, yet, but I am going to keep running in windowed mode.
Fist came across some additional quest hubs in Kun-Lai Summit that kept her busy Monday night. Fist has stayed away from dungeon runs because of the screen lockups. I don't like the idea of having my screen freeze in a dungeon in the middle of a boss fight, or having the other four players have to sit through a long wait for Fist to get back in game or find a replacement.
Fist did find enough to do, though, to DING! to level 89.
Wednesday, December 5, 2012
Tuesday (5 Dec) - The Neutral Auction House
Tuesday (5 Dec) - The Neutral Auction House
Happy had his alliance counterpart, Lost, do some house cleaning recently. To Happy, "housecleaning" means sending him stuff across the Neutral AH for Happy to sell or use. Lost grumbles that she never gets anything back from those exchanges. That's not entirely true, but with most the alliance side of the family on semi-retirement, they don't need much gold.
On Wednesday morning, Hap and Rakta happily got some game time in at Booty Bay in Stranglethorn Vale, manning the Neutral AH at separate locations. Weekday mornings are best for the transactions, since that is when the fewest people are likely to be using the AH. So, it was pretty surprising to find that the area where one of the Auctioneers hawked his wares, there were four other players hanging around. They hung around, and they hung around ...
Hap is a little new at the process (due to a certain death in the family no one speaks of), so he was going by the books - no transactions if there are other possible buyers around. Rakta is the vet, and she decided to do some testing to see if it was possible to get some business done without losing stuff to buyers stalking the AH for bargains.
Rakta's first surprise was that the neutral AH was empty! There was not one single thing for sale. That was a first, never seen before situation. Just to make sure the AH was functioning, Rakta posted a cheap recipe to see what happened. It posted and appeared in the AH. Ok, so it seems to be working.
The only player hanging around that Rakta took particular note of was a low level alliance with a "bank-like" name was standing right next the Auctioneer and had the Auctioneer targeted. His nameplate said he was "Away" but that did not mean he wasn't watching. Rakta monitored the player for five minutes, but no transactions appeared on AH. Thinking that the ally was watching Rakta, Rakta left the area. Hap, all by himself at the other location, monitored the AH instead of Rakta. Still, no transactions were being made. For all the players about, none of them seemed to be using the neutral AH.
Rakta returned, and tried slipping in a few things, to see what would happen. Hap saw them pop up on the AH and bought them as he was supposed to. No other player jumped in to try and buy the items, which Rakta posts for a single silver piece each to minimize the high cost of transactions charged by the neutral AH.
For the next fifteen minutes Rakta posted items and Hap bought them, moving many stacks of mats between the alliance side to the horde side. The two of them could have been all alone in the world. When the two finished up their business and left, the neutral AH was again empty.
The experiment with a Windowed WoW setup (instead of full screen) has been working well. There were no screen lockups Tuesday night, and Fist was pretty busy, mostly on the Townlong Steppes, where there is a war going on. Fist seems to have picked up a good quest thread, and has been happily bulling her way through them. I'm using about 90% of the screen for WoW and I can't tell any difference in response between windowed and full screen. In fact, logging in and screen swapping seem to work even faster in windowed mode.
Another side benefit of all the scrubbing, deleting, and reinstalling I've done, is that it gives me a chance to standardize a user interface that all of the toons can use. The UIs for each have been built as needed at the time, and don't follow any common template. I will keep the number of addons to those I feel are essential, but I'm not overly worried about the addons anymore. I don't think they were the problem. Fist will be the guinea pig, of course, since she gets the most game time and needs to be the best prepared.
The use of the default game UI was an interesting experiment in itself. I learned that it's workable, when necessary, but comes up well short of what addons can provide. I would not want to use it in a raid, for example, with the expanded number of spells and abilities I would need to have ready access to, versus just questing. The default UI did have one unexpected benefit - without my 3x3 grid of spells (the default UI spells are in one long line) I was pretty much forced to memorize what spell was assigned to what button since I did not have the visual 3x3 array as a crutch to look at. I'm not quite sure whether I will incorporate that into the standard UI, though. I do intend to try to keep the clean look that the default UI enforces. I really do like the way it looks.
Fist's efforts in Townlong Steppes got her to 30% of the way to level 90.
She was also excited to learn she had reached Exalted status with her first Pandaren faction, the Forest Hozen. She was very disappointed, though, to learn it was an empty honor. The Forest Hozen faction does not have any special rewards.
Raiding Update - Fist spoke with MM2 guild leader and raid leader, Bd, Tuesday night. The guild has one raid group that is pretty stable. They have one boss on farm, Bd said, but no other bosses down. They also have a weekly Looking For Raid (LFR) event that pulls in 10-15 players to help improve gear for real raiding. In addition, the guild has two contests coming up - one is a competition in doing Scenarios, and the other is an ambitious pet battle contest. Fist will look into the LFR once she hits level 90, but will probably need to do her dungeon runs to get her gear level high enough for the LFR. Lao caught Wild in game on Wednesday morning and .. well, she wasn't exactly impressed with Wild's gear, calling it "oh so last expansion." Lao was more than half right, since Wild's gear score is only i422, but Wild had to point out that ALL of his gear is Pandaria level. And it's not that pvp stuff, either. So there.
For all the work Fist has been doing, her gear level is not all that much better than Wild's. Fist's equipped gear level is i426. She's being held back by an i384 trinket and an i399 cape. The cape may be taken care of shortly, but the trinket will continue to deflate her gear score until she can get something solid to replace it.
Happy had his alliance counterpart, Lost, do some house cleaning recently. To Happy, "housecleaning" means sending him stuff across the Neutral AH for Happy to sell or use. Lost grumbles that she never gets anything back from those exchanges. That's not entirely true, but with most the alliance side of the family on semi-retirement, they don't need much gold.
On Wednesday morning, Hap and Rakta happily got some game time in at Booty Bay in Stranglethorn Vale, manning the Neutral AH at separate locations. Weekday mornings are best for the transactions, since that is when the fewest people are likely to be using the AH. So, it was pretty surprising to find that the area where one of the Auctioneers hawked his wares, there were four other players hanging around. They hung around, and they hung around ...
Hap is a little new at the process (due to a certain death in the family no one speaks of), so he was going by the books - no transactions if there are other possible buyers around. Rakta is the vet, and she decided to do some testing to see if it was possible to get some business done without losing stuff to buyers stalking the AH for bargains.
Rakta's first surprise was that the neutral AH was empty! There was not one single thing for sale. That was a first, never seen before situation. Just to make sure the AH was functioning, Rakta posted a cheap recipe to see what happened. It posted and appeared in the AH. Ok, so it seems to be working.
The only player hanging around that Rakta took particular note of was a low level alliance with a "bank-like" name was standing right next the Auctioneer and had the Auctioneer targeted. His nameplate said he was "Away" but that did not mean he wasn't watching. Rakta monitored the player for five minutes, but no transactions appeared on AH. Thinking that the ally was watching Rakta, Rakta left the area. Hap, all by himself at the other location, monitored the AH instead of Rakta. Still, no transactions were being made. For all the players about, none of them seemed to be using the neutral AH.
Rakta returned, and tried slipping in a few things, to see what would happen. Hap saw them pop up on the AH and bought them as he was supposed to. No other player jumped in to try and buy the items, which Rakta posts for a single silver piece each to minimize the high cost of transactions charged by the neutral AH.
For the next fifteen minutes Rakta posted items and Hap bought them, moving many stacks of mats between the alliance side to the horde side. The two of them could have been all alone in the world. When the two finished up their business and left, the neutral AH was again empty.
The experiment with a Windowed WoW setup (instead of full screen) has been working well. There were no screen lockups Tuesday night, and Fist was pretty busy, mostly on the Townlong Steppes, where there is a war going on. Fist seems to have picked up a good quest thread, and has been happily bulling her way through them. I'm using about 90% of the screen for WoW and I can't tell any difference in response between windowed and full screen. In fact, logging in and screen swapping seem to work even faster in windowed mode.
Another side benefit of all the scrubbing, deleting, and reinstalling I've done, is that it gives me a chance to standardize a user interface that all of the toons can use. The UIs for each have been built as needed at the time, and don't follow any common template. I will keep the number of addons to those I feel are essential, but I'm not overly worried about the addons anymore. I don't think they were the problem. Fist will be the guinea pig, of course, since she gets the most game time and needs to be the best prepared.
The use of the default game UI was an interesting experiment in itself. I learned that it's workable, when necessary, but comes up well short of what addons can provide. I would not want to use it in a raid, for example, with the expanded number of spells and abilities I would need to have ready access to, versus just questing. The default UI did have one unexpected benefit - without my 3x3 grid of spells (the default UI spells are in one long line) I was pretty much forced to memorize what spell was assigned to what button since I did not have the visual 3x3 array as a crutch to look at. I'm not quite sure whether I will incorporate that into the standard UI, though. I do intend to try to keep the clean look that the default UI enforces. I really do like the way it looks.
Fist's efforts in Townlong Steppes got her to 30% of the way to level 90.
She was also excited to learn she had reached Exalted status with her first Pandaren faction, the Forest Hozen. She was very disappointed, though, to learn it was an empty honor. The Forest Hozen faction does not have any special rewards.
Raiding Update - Fist spoke with MM2 guild leader and raid leader, Bd, Tuesday night. The guild has one raid group that is pretty stable. They have one boss on farm, Bd said, but no other bosses down. They also have a weekly Looking For Raid (LFR) event that pulls in 10-15 players to help improve gear for real raiding. In addition, the guild has two contests coming up - one is a competition in doing Scenarios, and the other is an ambitious pet battle contest. Fist will look into the LFR once she hits level 90, but will probably need to do her dungeon runs to get her gear level high enough for the LFR. Lao caught Wild in game on Wednesday morning and .. well, she wasn't exactly impressed with Wild's gear, calling it "oh so last expansion." Lao was more than half right, since Wild's gear score is only i422, but Wild had to point out that ALL of his gear is Pandaria level. And it's not that pvp stuff, either. So there.
For all the work Fist has been doing, her gear level is not all that much better than Wild's. Fist's equipped gear level is i426. She's being held back by an i384 trinket and an i399 cape. The cape may be taken care of shortly, but the trinket will continue to deflate her gear score until she can get something solid to replace it.
Monday, December 3, 2012
Weekend (2 Dec) - The Incursion Huntress
Weekend (2 Dec) - The Incursion Huntress
Fist was out and about for awhile on Saturday night. On Friday I got a screen lockout, the first since I did the PC scrub and the reinstall of WoW. Sigh. I was only using two addons, Auctioneer and Postal, and now they are both gone, too. It's likely a computer problem, though, having tried everything else.
Fist, it appears, has fallen into an in between position again. She has no quests and no clear idea where to head next. The last place she was dropped at was in the Valley of Eternal Blossoms. Fist took a ride with the flight master at Mogu'shan Palace, but it dumped her into an area of burning buildings with no one about - and no flight master, either. Apparently, Fist has missed a quest chain somewhere. A little frustrated, Fist hearthed to Honeydew and called it a night.
Before she left, Fist did have an interesting encounter in Four Winds (Thunderfoot Fields, I think) prior to the above. She was rescuing people, which entailed killing their captors first. In the middle of one such battle Fist was ganged up on by what she assumed was two more of the usual level 87/88 mobs she'd been slaughtering all evening. They weren't. They were level 90 pvp npcs, and they were elite. The name of the mob was "Incursion Huntress."
I looked it up in wowhead. It's an alliance npc, and they hang out in Krasarang Wilds, well south of where Fist was. All I can think of is that a player kited it over to where I was. Unfortunately, I didn't think to grab a screenshot. Fist made a fight of it, getting the elite to about 25% before Fist died.
Fist is 40% of the way to level 89.
Saturday - Got another scare on the computer late Saturday night. Fist was in Halfhill doing some farming - it's not quite as simple as Fist had thought - when an urgent message popped up on the screen. "Microsoft Security Essentials has detected viruses on your computer. Click ok to clean."
That was alarming. But, hmm, I have a virus checker, Avast. It didn't have any warnings to impart. I managed to do an online check to see what Microsoft Security Essentials was all about despite some intrusive attempts to take over my browser and force that click. The program in question is a valid Microsoft product, but it is a voluntary free download, not something installed by the operating system. I checked my system files and it isn't even installed on my computer.
There was no way I was going to click that button, but I also couldn't get it to go away. I could kill the browser, but when I opened it back up the message would be back. So I restarted the computer and it went away. I had Avast run a virus check just to be sure and it came up clean. I had read that Microsoft recently lost it's seal of approval for their virus checker. It wouldn't surprise me if that was an attempt to get me to install their virus checker, trying to convince me that I needed it to get rid of a virus. The good news is that Fist was in game for almost two hours with no screen lockout.
However, Fist spent more time than she wanted doing little more than looking for something to do. It's really weird, but she has been forced to start flight path jumping to try and find quests to do. She finds pockets of three-five quests, but once they are done there are no suggestions leading to another set of quests, such as "take this chicken to Kentucky Fried and talk to Colonel Sanders." I'm used to having to delete quests from my quest book because all 25 quest slots are full. Not in Pandaria. Fist rarely has more than a dozen open quests, and way too often can count her open quests on one hand.
She called it a night in Kun-Lai Summit at a little out of the way place called The Grummle Baazar. There are three quests there, which is the sum total of her open quests.
Fist creeped along, increasing that 40% to 56% of the way to level 89.
Fist was out and about for awhile on Saturday night. On Friday I got a screen lockout, the first since I did the PC scrub and the reinstall of WoW. Sigh. I was only using two addons, Auctioneer and Postal, and now they are both gone, too. It's likely a computer problem, though, having tried everything else.
Fist, it appears, has fallen into an in between position again. She has no quests and no clear idea where to head next. The last place she was dropped at was in the Valley of Eternal Blossoms. Fist took a ride with the flight master at Mogu'shan Palace, but it dumped her into an area of burning buildings with no one about - and no flight master, either. Apparently, Fist has missed a quest chain somewhere. A little frustrated, Fist hearthed to Honeydew and called it a night.
Before she left, Fist did have an interesting encounter in Four Winds (Thunderfoot Fields, I think) prior to the above. She was rescuing people, which entailed killing their captors first. In the middle of one such battle Fist was ganged up on by what she assumed was two more of the usual level 87/88 mobs she'd been slaughtering all evening. They weren't. They were level 90 pvp npcs, and they were elite. The name of the mob was "Incursion Huntress."
I looked it up in wowhead. It's an alliance npc, and they hang out in Krasarang Wilds, well south of where Fist was. All I can think of is that a player kited it over to where I was. Unfortunately, I didn't think to grab a screenshot. Fist made a fight of it, getting the elite to about 25% before Fist died.
Fist is 40% of the way to level 89.
Saturday - Got another scare on the computer late Saturday night. Fist was in Halfhill doing some farming - it's not quite as simple as Fist had thought - when an urgent message popped up on the screen. "Microsoft Security Essentials has detected viruses on your computer. Click ok to clean."
That was alarming. But, hmm, I have a virus checker, Avast. It didn't have any warnings to impart. I managed to do an online check to see what Microsoft Security Essentials was all about despite some intrusive attempts to take over my browser and force that click. The program in question is a valid Microsoft product, but it is a voluntary free download, not something installed by the operating system. I checked my system files and it isn't even installed on my computer.
There was no way I was going to click that button, but I also couldn't get it to go away. I could kill the browser, but when I opened it back up the message would be back. So I restarted the computer and it went away. I had Avast run a virus check just to be sure and it came up clean. I had read that Microsoft recently lost it's seal of approval for their virus checker. It wouldn't surprise me if that was an attempt to get me to install their virus checker, trying to convince me that I needed it to get rid of a virus. The good news is that Fist was in game for almost two hours with no screen lockout.
However, Fist spent more time than she wanted doing little more than looking for something to do. It's really weird, but she has been forced to start flight path jumping to try and find quests to do. She finds pockets of three-five quests, but once they are done there are no suggestions leading to another set of quests, such as "take this chicken to Kentucky Fried and talk to Colonel Sanders." I'm used to having to delete quests from my quest book because all 25 quest slots are full. Not in Pandaria. Fist rarely has more than a dozen open quests, and way too often can count her open quests on one hand.
She called it a night in Kun-Lai Summit at a little out of the way place called The Grummle Baazar. There are three quests there, which is the sum total of her open quests.
Fist creeped along, increasing that 40% to 56% of the way to level 89.
Wednesday, November 28, 2012
Tuesday (28 Nov) - Stealth Patch 5.1
Tuesday (28 Nov) - Stealth Patch 5.1
Ok, so patch 5.1 didn't exactly sneak up on us, but nobody in the Wild family paid much attention to it. It arrived on Tuesday, a very small installation, and at first I thought it was a common place bug fix. It's actually a rather significant patch. Anyway, all the changes I found interesting can be read below - after Fist gets a word in.
On Tuesday night Fist DINGED! to level 88. The quests have been mostly a blur, but individually, as Fist has done them, she has to appreciate the effort to make them entertaining. It's pretty obvious her pace has slowed, though. Fist never comes back to town with all her bags full anymore. Full bags were the norm prior to Pandaria.
She has been spending time in Halfhill at the market. She has been growing vegetables, but has been limited by her level, since the daily farming quests are for level 90s. Fist also discovered Sungshin Ironpaw, who carries almost all of the cooking materials needed to get from skill 1 to skill 525. Any character can do this, provided a level 85 plus character is available to buy the mats from Sungshin. Fist was at skill 380. She could have leveled to 525 in under ten minutes, except that she was short on one ingredient the trainer doesn't provide - golden carp. Those can be fished in any Pandaren waters. Fist meandered down to the river that runs next to Halfhill and fished all the carp she needed in about a half hour. Sungshin offers a series of quests to continue improving Fist's cooking skills.
Patch 5-1 News -
It's called the Pandaren Campaign. There are new daily quests and, based on what I'm reading, a series of quests involving battles with enemy npcs and opposite faction players. For pvpers it sounds like a lot of fun! For the HOrde, Ongrom Black Tooth is the point of contact. For the Alliance, it's Proveditor Grantley. Most of the action occurs in Krasarang Wilds and Vale of the eternal Blossoms. I assume it's level 90 action.
Level 90 players can now upgrade gear to higher ilevels (up to 8 higher ilevels) using justice and valor points.
There is now a "Brawler's Guild"where players can compete in one-on-one PVE combat with npc competitors. Members of the Brawler's Guild can actually watch other players compete. There are rewards.
TIME ZONE Standardization: Blizzard has adopted a single time zone for most events. For example, sunrise in a realm will occur at 5:30am PST whether you are east coast or west coast; ie, if you play on the east coast sunrise is now at 8:30am, not 5:30am EST. This applies to ALL realms except Oceanic. No change for us in PST, but a realms on east coast times will have to get used to sunset coming at 9:30pm, and daily quest/profession reset at 6am.
There are a ton of class changes as Blizzard does it's tweaking. The awsome healing of Mistweaver monks has a lot of fiddling. Can't tell if the end result is better or worse. Same for Fist in Windwalker spec. Too many changes to know what the overall effect will be.
Pandarn weapon enchants have been overhauled. For some time now weapon enchants have been proc-based. Meaning the enchant kicks in periodically for a limited time based on a formula vs being always on. Apparently there were many problems associated with these enchants, and the fix is to invent an entirely new system for these two enchants. It's called Real Procs-per-minute (Real PPM). I quote: "Regardless of how you’re attacking or healing, slow or fast, with DoTs or direct heals, whatever, you can expect to get the same proc frequency, on average. Dual wielding doubles the proc frequency. Haste increases the proc rate as well." Each enchant has a standardized proc rate, which is what they will tinker with when making adjustments.
There is a couple of PAGES having to do with Pet Battles. Sorry, I haven't even turned that on yet.
PVP Power have been changed: "PvP Power will now only increase the healing of dedicated healing specializations, and will now only increase the damage of dedicated damage or tanking specializations.The amount of PvP Power on weapons has been increased.Arena matches now have a 25 minute time limit (was 45 minutes)."
Lots of tweaks and fiddling with dungeons, raids, et al.
Ok, so patch 5.1 didn't exactly sneak up on us, but nobody in the Wild family paid much attention to it. It arrived on Tuesday, a very small installation, and at first I thought it was a common place bug fix. It's actually a rather significant patch. Anyway, all the changes I found interesting can be read below - after Fist gets a word in.
On Tuesday night Fist DINGED! to level 88. The quests have been mostly a blur, but individually, as Fist has done them, she has to appreciate the effort to make them entertaining. It's pretty obvious her pace has slowed, though. Fist never comes back to town with all her bags full anymore. Full bags were the norm prior to Pandaria.
She has been spending time in Halfhill at the market. She has been growing vegetables, but has been limited by her level, since the daily farming quests are for level 90s. Fist also discovered Sungshin Ironpaw, who carries almost all of the cooking materials needed to get from skill 1 to skill 525. Any character can do this, provided a level 85 plus character is available to buy the mats from Sungshin. Fist was at skill 380. She could have leveled to 525 in under ten minutes, except that she was short on one ingredient the trainer doesn't provide - golden carp. Those can be fished in any Pandaren waters. Fist meandered down to the river that runs next to Halfhill and fished all the carp she needed in about a half hour. Sungshin offers a series of quests to continue improving Fist's cooking skills.
Patch 5-1 News -
It's called the Pandaren Campaign. There are new daily quests and, based on what I'm reading, a series of quests involving battles with enemy npcs and opposite faction players. For pvpers it sounds like a lot of fun! For the HOrde, Ongrom Black Tooth is the point of contact. For the Alliance, it's Proveditor Grantley. Most of the action occurs in Krasarang Wilds and Vale of the eternal Blossoms. I assume it's level 90 action.
Level 90 players can now upgrade gear to higher ilevels (up to 8 higher ilevels) using justice and valor points.
There is now a "Brawler's Guild"where players can compete in one-on-one PVE combat with npc competitors. Members of the Brawler's Guild can actually watch other players compete. There are rewards.
TIME ZONE Standardization: Blizzard has adopted a single time zone for most events. For example, sunrise in a realm will occur at 5:30am PST whether you are east coast or west coast; ie, if you play on the east coast sunrise is now at 8:30am, not 5:30am EST. This applies to ALL realms except Oceanic. No change for us in PST, but a realms on east coast times will have to get used to sunset coming at 9:30pm, and daily quest/profession reset at 6am.
There are a ton of class changes as Blizzard does it's tweaking. The awsome healing of Mistweaver monks has a lot of fiddling. Can't tell if the end result is better or worse. Same for Fist in Windwalker spec. Too many changes to know what the overall effect will be.
Pandarn weapon enchants have been overhauled. For some time now weapon enchants have been proc-based. Meaning the enchant kicks in periodically for a limited time based on a formula vs being always on. Apparently there were many problems associated with these enchants, and the fix is to invent an entirely new system for these two enchants. It's called Real Procs-per-minute (Real PPM). I quote: "Regardless of how you’re attacking or healing, slow or fast, with DoTs or direct heals, whatever, you can expect to get the same proc frequency, on average. Dual wielding doubles the proc frequency. Haste increases the proc rate as well." Each enchant has a standardized proc rate, which is what they will tinker with when making adjustments.
There is a couple of PAGES having to do with Pet Battles. Sorry, I haven't even turned that on yet.
PVP Power have been changed: "PvP Power will now only increase the healing of dedicated healing specializations, and will now only increase the damage of dedicated damage or tanking specializations.The amount of PvP Power on weapons has been increased.Arena matches now have a 25 minute time limit (was 45 minutes)."
Lots of tweaks and fiddling with dungeons, raids, et al.
Monday, November 26, 2012
Weekend (25 Nov) - Guild Master for a ... Moment
Weekend (25 Nov) - Guild Master for a ... Moment
The initial number of bank slots available to a guild is six. However, with the right guild reputation, it's possible to add more. Happy looked into this, as he is struggling to find room for all of his stock. Happy found that there is a guild perk available that grants a guild a 7th bank slot. When Happy went to the guild vendor to buy it, however, Happy was turned down. Happy is the guild master. But, the guild master must also have reached at least Friendly reputation with the guild to qualify for purchase. When Happy made The Undercity his permanent home, there was no such thing as guild reputation. Happy never thought he'd need it, either.
Well, maybe it would be a good thing for Happy to get out and see a little of the world, and earn some guild rep in the process. Getting from Neutral to Friendly shouldn't take all that long. "That's gold a wasting!" Happy cried out. Happy would not leave his beloved Auction House.
A compromise was reached. Fist has Exalted rep with the guild. Happy grudgingly agreed to pass guild leadership to Fist. Fist headed over to the Guild Vendor and asked for her 7th bank slot. "Where's the gold?" the vendor growled. Gold?
Given a nudge by Philly, Happy reluctantly turned over TEN THOUSAND GOLD to Fist. Hmm, thought Fist. I'm the guild master! I've got 10k gold in my pocket! Who needs a 7th slot? It was tempting, but Fist finally, as grudgingly as Happy had given it to her, paid the vendor and created the guild's 7th bank slot.
Fist thought about keeping the title. Happy then explained the responsibilities, and told Fist the guild was all hers if she wanted the headaches. Having heard what her mother had to deal with, she decided she wanted no part of that. Fist returned guild leadership to Happy.
Saturday - Fist discovered that she had missed a quest at Grookin Village in Jade Forest. That quest started a chain that kept Fist busy for awhile, with two cut scenes and a visit by a nasty monster that might be the equivalent of Wrath's Ragnaros. Just a taste of what's to come in the raids, I guess. Fist's quest lines had been rather disjointed lately, but completing that series of quests seemed to get things back on track. She is back in the Four Winds, now, with the npc Li Li trotting along with Fist. Li Li is a happy young lady who always has something positive to say about whatever Fist is doing. Fist will be a little sad when her quests are over with.
On the not so good side, there were two screen locks in the hour Fist was in game. I was playing without any addons at all. None. It's not the addons. Which means it's probably a computer problem. Or an installation problem. Gah, I don't want to have to reinstall WoW. But I think that has got to be the next step.
Sunday - On Sunday I did a complete system check of my computer and WoW. I uninstalled World of Warcraft, and followed Blizzard's directions to totally obliterate every file on the computer associated with WoW. I felt like a rogue on a quest to assassinate all of the parties of a conspiracy to keep me away from the game. I deleted the recycle bin to destroy all remaining evidence of WoW. I ran a chkdsk, which is a pre-operating system check of the file system. That took hours. I defragmented the hard drive. And did about ten other things having to do with ensuring the proper operation of the system. Everything checked out.
It took about two hours to reinstall World of Warcraft. Fist logged in to a clean install of WoW. Some settings are kept on the Blizzard side, and Fist was happy to see that the keybinding settings and location of spells and abilities on the button bars were still in place. Everything else was like a new game. No addons were installed.
Fist spent about three hours total on Sunday night in Pandaria. There were no screen locks. That is encouraging, but I'm not declaring victory yet.
Fist, of course, just wants to get out there are get things done. She made decent, if slow, progress. Fist has discovered Halfhill, a town in the Four Winds where the Tillers faction makes their home. This is a new feature of Pandaria, where faction rep is gained by working a garden. Fist has only just started, but she kind of liked it. Fist received gardening tools, and planted her first four plots. Gardening requires tilling the soil, planting seeds, weeding, watering, and harvesting. The harvesting part has a growing period built in, so plants can't be harvested immediately. Fist will find out on Monday if she can harvest her crop.
Fist is now 66% of the way to level 88.
The initial number of bank slots available to a guild is six. However, with the right guild reputation, it's possible to add more. Happy looked into this, as he is struggling to find room for all of his stock. Happy found that there is a guild perk available that grants a guild a 7th bank slot. When Happy went to the guild vendor to buy it, however, Happy was turned down. Happy is the guild master. But, the guild master must also have reached at least Friendly reputation with the guild to qualify for purchase. When Happy made The Undercity his permanent home, there was no such thing as guild reputation. Happy never thought he'd need it, either.
Well, maybe it would be a good thing for Happy to get out and see a little of the world, and earn some guild rep in the process. Getting from Neutral to Friendly shouldn't take all that long. "That's gold a wasting!" Happy cried out. Happy would not leave his beloved Auction House.
A compromise was reached. Fist has Exalted rep with the guild. Happy grudgingly agreed to pass guild leadership to Fist. Fist headed over to the Guild Vendor and asked for her 7th bank slot. "Where's the gold?" the vendor growled. Gold?
Given a nudge by Philly, Happy reluctantly turned over TEN THOUSAND GOLD to Fist. Hmm, thought Fist. I'm the guild master! I've got 10k gold in my pocket! Who needs a 7th slot? It was tempting, but Fist finally, as grudgingly as Happy had given it to her, paid the vendor and created the guild's 7th bank slot.
Fist thought about keeping the title. Happy then explained the responsibilities, and told Fist the guild was all hers if she wanted the headaches. Having heard what her mother had to deal with, she decided she wanted no part of that. Fist returned guild leadership to Happy.
Saturday - Fist discovered that she had missed a quest at Grookin Village in Jade Forest. That quest started a chain that kept Fist busy for awhile, with two cut scenes and a visit by a nasty monster that might be the equivalent of Wrath's Ragnaros. Just a taste of what's to come in the raids, I guess. Fist's quest lines had been rather disjointed lately, but completing that series of quests seemed to get things back on track. She is back in the Four Winds, now, with the npc Li Li trotting along with Fist. Li Li is a happy young lady who always has something positive to say about whatever Fist is doing. Fist will be a little sad when her quests are over with.
On the not so good side, there were two screen locks in the hour Fist was in game. I was playing without any addons at all. None. It's not the addons. Which means it's probably a computer problem. Or an installation problem. Gah, I don't want to have to reinstall WoW. But I think that has got to be the next step.
Sunday - On Sunday I did a complete system check of my computer and WoW. I uninstalled World of Warcraft, and followed Blizzard's directions to totally obliterate every file on the computer associated with WoW. I felt like a rogue on a quest to assassinate all of the parties of a conspiracy to keep me away from the game. I deleted the recycle bin to destroy all remaining evidence of WoW. I ran a chkdsk, which is a pre-operating system check of the file system. That took hours. I defragmented the hard drive. And did about ten other things having to do with ensuring the proper operation of the system. Everything checked out.
It took about two hours to reinstall World of Warcraft. Fist logged in to a clean install of WoW. Some settings are kept on the Blizzard side, and Fist was happy to see that the keybinding settings and location of spells and abilities on the button bars were still in place. Everything else was like a new game. No addons were installed.
Fist spent about three hours total on Sunday night in Pandaria. There were no screen locks. That is encouraging, but I'm not declaring victory yet.
Fist, of course, just wants to get out there are get things done. She made decent, if slow, progress. Fist has discovered Halfhill, a town in the Four Winds where the Tillers faction makes their home. This is a new feature of Pandaria, where faction rep is gained by working a garden. Fist has only just started, but she kind of liked it. Fist received gardening tools, and planted her first four plots. Gardening requires tilling the soil, planting seeds, weeding, watering, and harvesting. The harvesting part has a growing period built in, so plants can't be harvested immediately. Fist will find out on Monday if she can harvest her crop.
Fist is now 66% of the way to level 88.
Thursday, November 22, 2012
Thanksgiving (22 Nov) - Happy's Crazy Idea
Thanksgiving (22 Nov) - Happy's Crazy Idea
A few nights ago Happy and Lao (with input from Sis, Cerulean, Almond, et al) were talking about the poor state of enchanting materials. So many items have become nearly worthless since Mists of Pandaria. This is Happy's fourth expansion, and it is by far the worst in terms of lost value of mats from the previous expansion. Mats that were hit especially hard were dream shards and cosmic essences. Despite a value that has gone down to near zero, sales are infinitesimal. Happy doesn't like losing money, and worse, he doesn't like carrying stock that isn't going to make him any money.
So, he came up with an idea. Happy pitched it to Wild first, and Wild was, well, rather indifferent. It would mean getting out of his hammock and actually doing some work. Happy then thought of Sis. Sis is an enchanter. Maybe she would be interested.
There are many enchanting recipes that use cosmic essence and dream shards. Happy browsed the enchanting recipes on the AH and yes, there were some potential profit to be made making enchants using dirt cheap mats. Mats that Happy wants reduce the stock of. Happy is offering to send 12 stacks of greater cosmic, dream shards, and infinite dust (most enchants using the first two need infinite dust, too). Sis would have to do the work, but she could keep any and all profits. I don't think Sin's family has an enchanter, but if so, the same deal would apply.
Just let Happy know and he'll send over the mats.
Fist was in game Wednesday night for about an hour. She started in the Valley of the Four Winds. Her quest log is pretty full, but her usual high speed romp through them took a detour when many of those quests proved difficult. Difficult not in terms of dangerous mobs or anything, but finding the location, item, or person required. There are so many small villages in Pandaria! And each one has a few quests. Pandaria is a lot smaller than Fist thought it was, too. Just riding around looking for quest locations, Fist managed to wander into nearly every zone. In addition to the two zones Fist has been doing most of her questing in (Four Winds and Jade Forest) she also found herself in Kun-Lai Summit, Karasang Wilds, and Vale of the Eternal Blossoms. Not sure how Fist managed to arrive in Eternal Blossoms, as that is a level 90 pvp zone. At level 87, she decided it might be best to beat feet out of there. The only zones she has not been to are Townlong Steppes and Dread Wastes.
As for leveling, she is doing ok with her non-Dominos vanilla user interface. The one thing it doesn't provide is a percentage of experience. Fist had to calculate that herself: Hmm, 4,399,719 experience divided into 18,980,000 total experience equals, umm, let's see, ahh, here goes: 23% of the way to level 88. Or, in the ancient language of Bars, Fist is 4 1/2 bars (out of a max 20 bars) toward level 88. Been a long time since any Wild family member used bars to count experience. There were no screen lockouts, either.
Oh, in one quest that Fist was on, she found a gray item in a cave that was worth 100g! Saurok Stone Tablet has no use, but it's vendor value is 100 gold. It seems it can only be found in that cave, and only once per player. Still, a very nice bonus for Fist.
A few nights ago Happy and Lao (with input from Sis, Cerulean, Almond, et al) were talking about the poor state of enchanting materials. So many items have become nearly worthless since Mists of Pandaria. This is Happy's fourth expansion, and it is by far the worst in terms of lost value of mats from the previous expansion. Mats that were hit especially hard were dream shards and cosmic essences. Despite a value that has gone down to near zero, sales are infinitesimal. Happy doesn't like losing money, and worse, he doesn't like carrying stock that isn't going to make him any money.
So, he came up with an idea. Happy pitched it to Wild first, and Wild was, well, rather indifferent. It would mean getting out of his hammock and actually doing some work. Happy then thought of Sis. Sis is an enchanter. Maybe she would be interested.
There are many enchanting recipes that use cosmic essence and dream shards. Happy browsed the enchanting recipes on the AH and yes, there were some potential profit to be made making enchants using dirt cheap mats. Mats that Happy wants reduce the stock of. Happy is offering to send 12 stacks of greater cosmic, dream shards, and infinite dust (most enchants using the first two need infinite dust, too). Sis would have to do the work, but she could keep any and all profits. I don't think Sin's family has an enchanter, but if so, the same deal would apply.
Just let Happy know and he'll send over the mats.
Fist was in game Wednesday night for about an hour. She started in the Valley of the Four Winds. Her quest log is pretty full, but her usual high speed romp through them took a detour when many of those quests proved difficult. Difficult not in terms of dangerous mobs or anything, but finding the location, item, or person required. There are so many small villages in Pandaria! And each one has a few quests. Pandaria is a lot smaller than Fist thought it was, too. Just riding around looking for quest locations, Fist managed to wander into nearly every zone. In addition to the two zones Fist has been doing most of her questing in (Four Winds and Jade Forest) she also found herself in Kun-Lai Summit, Karasang Wilds, and Vale of the Eternal Blossoms. Not sure how Fist managed to arrive in Eternal Blossoms, as that is a level 90 pvp zone. At level 87, she decided it might be best to beat feet out of there. The only zones she has not been to are Townlong Steppes and Dread Wastes.
As for leveling, she is doing ok with her non-Dominos vanilla user interface. The one thing it doesn't provide is a percentage of experience. Fist had to calculate that herself: Hmm, 4,399,719 experience divided into 18,980,000 total experience equals, umm, let's see, ahh, here goes: 23% of the way to level 88. Or, in the ancient language of Bars, Fist is 4 1/2 bars (out of a max 20 bars) toward level 88. Been a long time since any Wild family member used bars to count experience. There were no screen lockouts, either.
Oh, in one quest that Fist was on, she found a gray item in a cave that was worth 100g! Saurok Stone Tablet has no use, but it's vendor value is 100 gold. It seems it can only be found in that cave, and only once per player. Still, a very nice bonus for Fist.
Wednesday, November 21, 2012
Tuesday (20 Nov) - Professional Zen Master
Tuesday (20 Nov) - Professional Zen Master
It's usually all about Fist in the Wild family these days. However, Wild did manage to sneak in a first for the family that Fist thought she would get. On Monday night Wild was clearing out his mailbox and discovered that Happy had sent him some of the new enchanting mats - spirit dust, mysterious essence, and ethereal shards. Seeing his new toys, Wild powered up his enchanting profession. Wild had rather lazily gotten his enchanting skill up to 540 (600 max) without too much effort. With the new mats from Happy, and several enchants that gave as much as 5 skills for one enchant, in a remarkably short time and at a pretty cheap price, Wild reached max skill 600 in enchanting. That earned him the title of Professional Zen Master. Wild now has all of the trainable enchants for Pandaria. What has been a continuing source of irritation, though, is that I can't find a complete list of enchants that do NOT come from a trainer, and where to get them from.
Fist has been working her butt off earning her leather working skills and still has a ways to go at skill 546. But she acknowledged Wild's accomplishments - she certainly wants to be on Wild's good side so she can get enchants for her gear.
Tuesday Project - I am getting a bit desperate to get these screen lockouts corrected. I have little faith in Blizzard's recommendations, which involves many hours of time spent deleting folders and testing the results, followed by a complete reinstall of WoW if that didn't work. I'm more than half convinced it will be for nothing, and the screen lockups would continue. I can't leave things are they are, though. I can't trust entering a dungeon or raid knowing that at any time my PC could freeze up.
So, Step 1 - I'm going to delete key folders to get a "clean" addon free setup. This will be done after the Tuesday maintenance.
Happy was the initial guinea pig for this, and when he saw what had been done to his Auction House he nearly cried. All of his buy and bid information, built up over many years, was gone. Happy will have to rebuild all that. Fortunately, he remembers what all of the common item pricing is so he should be fully back in business in no time. Even the resetting of pricing might be a good thing in the end. Pandaria has radically changed the value of things, so perhaps getting a fresh account sheet will do Happy some good. Happy doesn't use any addons except for the Auctioneer, and has never gotten a screen lock down in the bowels of the lightly populated Undercity, so that was no check.
Fist was then tossed into the ring to see how she fared. I can manage without addons for everything but the UI, for which I use the addon Dominos. However, in order to ensure that Dominos was not the culprit, Fist was forced to set up his UI using only the basic game defaults. I did manage to set up a basic DPS rotation and assigned keybindings for the number keys just as I do for Dominos. It's a little more awkward having a line of spells instead of the nice 3x3 square that mirrors the number keys, but ... Fist tested the thing first on a target dummy, and although it felt weird it was workable. She then made a short run outside one of the little towns in Pandaria. She killed a couple dozen panthers, collected some leather she could use, and declared she could manage it. I'm going to set up a few more keybindings (my twitch reflex kept going for keys that I hadn't set the bindings for, yet) and then attempt some quests. I'll see how long I can go before ... well, we'll just see.
It's usually all about Fist in the Wild family these days. However, Wild did manage to sneak in a first for the family that Fist thought she would get. On Monday night Wild was clearing out his mailbox and discovered that Happy had sent him some of the new enchanting mats - spirit dust, mysterious essence, and ethereal shards. Seeing his new toys, Wild powered up his enchanting profession. Wild had rather lazily gotten his enchanting skill up to 540 (600 max) without too much effort. With the new mats from Happy, and several enchants that gave as much as 5 skills for one enchant, in a remarkably short time and at a pretty cheap price, Wild reached max skill 600 in enchanting. That earned him the title of Professional Zen Master. Wild now has all of the trainable enchants for Pandaria. What has been a continuing source of irritation, though, is that I can't find a complete list of enchants that do NOT come from a trainer, and where to get them from.
Fist has been working her butt off earning her leather working skills and still has a ways to go at skill 546. But she acknowledged Wild's accomplishments - she certainly wants to be on Wild's good side so she can get enchants for her gear.
Tuesday Project - I am getting a bit desperate to get these screen lockouts corrected. I have little faith in Blizzard's recommendations, which involves many hours of time spent deleting folders and testing the results, followed by a complete reinstall of WoW if that didn't work. I'm more than half convinced it will be for nothing, and the screen lockups would continue. I can't leave things are they are, though. I can't trust entering a dungeon or raid knowing that at any time my PC could freeze up.
So, Step 1 - I'm going to delete key folders to get a "clean" addon free setup. This will be done after the Tuesday maintenance.
Happy was the initial guinea pig for this, and when he saw what had been done to his Auction House he nearly cried. All of his buy and bid information, built up over many years, was gone. Happy will have to rebuild all that. Fortunately, he remembers what all of the common item pricing is so he should be fully back in business in no time. Even the resetting of pricing might be a good thing in the end. Pandaria has radically changed the value of things, so perhaps getting a fresh account sheet will do Happy some good. Happy doesn't use any addons except for the Auctioneer, and has never gotten a screen lock down in the bowels of the lightly populated Undercity, so that was no check.
Fist was then tossed into the ring to see how she fared. I can manage without addons for everything but the UI, for which I use the addon Dominos. However, in order to ensure that Dominos was not the culprit, Fist was forced to set up his UI using only the basic game defaults. I did manage to set up a basic DPS rotation and assigned keybindings for the number keys just as I do for Dominos. It's a little more awkward having a line of spells instead of the nice 3x3 square that mirrors the number keys, but ... Fist tested the thing first on a target dummy, and although it felt weird it was workable. She then made a short run outside one of the little towns in Pandaria. She killed a couple dozen panthers, collected some leather she could use, and declared she could manage it. I'm going to set up a few more keybindings (my twitch reflex kept going for keys that I hadn't set the bindings for, yet) and then attempt some quests. I'll see how long I can go before ... well, we'll just see.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
