Hitting The Grind Part 2

Hitting The Grind Part 2

JB is now level 91, has her barracks up and operating, and has three followers. JB can run missions now, but her followers can't be used as bodyguards. Yet. I think I have to get the barracks to level 2 first.

JB also spent some of Happy's gold and bought a mace already upgraded to level 4 that greatly bumped up her gear level. Jocy helped out by crafting a second mace for her to duel wield with, but JB will have to get the upgrades herself for that one. Finally, Happy grudgingly gifted JB a Skull of War trinket, created by Fist's Inscription hut. Didn't cost Happy anything, except for the 3000 gold he thought he was going to sell it for. Happy didn't grumble too bad, though, since the price for that trinket has plummeted to 999g.

JB's gear score rose from i473 to i512. All of the heirloom gear went back into storage.
The next task on her agenda is her professions, which languished in Jocy's unkempt care. All of her secondary professions can now start leveling up to the max 700.

JB traveled to Ashran to meet with the Alchemy master so that she could begin leveling her prime profession again. HER profession. She now has a number of Draenor recipes, but the first one, Crescent oil, looks to be an easy starting point. All she needs is crescent fish, which are easy to catch. JB is only 525 in fishing, but that's okay, she can level her fishing skill and use the fish to start leveling her Alchemy. JB then headed back to Orgrimmar and rummaged around her quarters. Where is that fishing pole?

Another imperative is to upgrade her barracks to level 2 in order to make her bodyguards available. Those plans can be purchased in Ashran, but only if JB is level 100. Sigh. So, if she wants it earlier she has to hope to get a drop of the plan "Comprehensive Outpost Construction Guide." One of my great disappointments with this expansion is that so much of it depends on random chance instead of working to achieve it.

That said, the next step is to acquire an Alchemy Lab. Those plans become available once JB gets a level 2 Town Hall. See above for what is holding that up.

JB could have one sooner is she gets lucky and finds an Alchemy  "Mysterious Flask" or comes across "Outpost Building Assembly Notes." See above for what is holding that up.

Once all the above gets sorted out by random chance, JB can get her lab operating. Most important is to start crafting Savage Blood, which is in high demand for making gear and/or selling on the AH.
On a broader front, the family is taking a close look at what professions are represented in both personal and garrison professions. For example, the family has two blacksmiths. Are two needed? The answer is yes, for crafting gear that all members need and to sell the extra items that pay for the gear that is used. The family doesn't need two smelters, however. That potentially opens a spot for another profession. Another candidate to change is the Skinning profession. There seems to be an abundance of crafting mats for leatherworkers that makes skinning less useful.

What would they be replaced with? Fist has a Scribe's Quarters in her garrison. A nice compleement would be train someone in Inscription. Does Fist want to sign up for that? Philly would argue that she already has the Inscription profession. Philly is only level 85. Her best hope is that JB reaches level 100 and then Philly can be boosted. Maybe. So, on the table is a potential change in Fist's profession, removing Skinning and replacing it with Inscription.

What Smelting might be replaced with is another question. Jocy has a gem boutique, and could drop smelting for Jewelcrafting. Philly bristles again. Jewelcrafting is her second profession.

When Philly began to argue, Jocy interrupted. Level up, max your professions, and get your garrison. That's the only way to earn your way into the coming Legion. Hard news to bear.

Hitting the Grind Again

Hitting the Grind Again

JB isn't sure she wants to do this. She had a lot of fun playing around in the Twilight Highlands and Mount Hyjal. Getting herself muscled up to mash a few mid-level elite monsters was a hoot, even when she didn't always survive. She probably won't ever forget her solo clobbering a bunch of elites in Bastion of Twilight. Even her lark through Pandaria was entertaining since she was only visiting.

But that's in the past. In front of her is no walk in the park. From here on out she'll be on the same footing as everyone else taking on a new challenge. Sure, four members of the family - Wild, Jocy, Tiphaine, and Fist - have trodden this path before. JB can take advantage of that knowledge to some extent, but she still has to grind it out by herself.

I'm just not sure that yours truly is up to going through this for the fifth time.

JB was given the night off. Movie night at the house. . .  but the movie sucked.

Now it's a little past 11pm. JB took the Dark Portal to Draenor.

She is now the fifth family member to have a Garrison.

Status: 74% of the way to level 91. Gear level i473.

The Dark Portal of Draenor Awaits

The Dark Portal of Draenor Awaits

JB promised that she would not turn up again until she hit level 89. Count it done. JB advanced to level 89 on Sunday by running Molten Front dailies and picking twilight jasmine. The herb gathering was awesome - with rested xp JB got 3,250 xp for each flower she picked! Compare that to less than 10 xp for killing random mobs. Now she needs a new plan to reach level 90. What to do, what to do?

While formulating a new plan, JB pattered about in Pandaria's kiddy pool (the Jade Forest) and found a level 86 elite to kill. Later on, she got a little too overconfident and died battling an elite crab.  That might be a sign that JB isn't ready to tackle the Timeless Isle. JB forgets to use her special spells. Her feral spirits never get to stretch their legs, or her fire elemental. JB mostly just explored and mapped, picking up flight paths along the way, and didn't bother doing many quests unless they were kill quests. Normal mobs with rested xp were giving JB around 800 xp per kill, which isn't too bad, and she still gets the 3,250 xp for flower picking. She's slower in Pandaria because she can't fly in that zone yet. Not until level 90.

The Morning: JB is 41% of the way to level 90. Picked flowers and did the Molten Front dailies. Pushed herself to 79% of the way to level 90.

Lunchtime: JB follows in Wild's footsteps and takes her solo self into the Bastion of Twilight (BoT) ten man raid. She just wanted to know how far she could get. BoT has two waves of mobs in the center and two more waves of mobs on either side. JB went up the middle and pulled the first wave. Oops, she aggroed the 2nd wave, too. JB did some mad killing and this time unleashed her feral spirits and her fire elemental. JB barely survived that when the two edge grouping of mobs decided to join in. It was rough, but JB stayed alive long enough for the feral spirits to respawn and they kept a lot of mobs busy while she killed them.

"That was fun," JB laughed, a little shakenly. "But let's not do that again." JB's level  improved from 79% to 81%. "What! Was that all?" JB growled.

So then it was back to picking flowers. Boring, but it was steady work. So what time is it now? 2:24pm? Ok. BOOM! JB is level 90. She did a little dance. Ok, enough partying. Time to raid her bank, where a stack of fresh gear lay ready.

JB had to see what goodies she could add to her gear set. Note that she can still wear four pieces of heirloom gear until she reaches level 91.

Current Gear Score: i437

Time to open her presents. Three new i90 pieces of gear awaited her, courtesy of the family's caching of gear from the Timeless Isles: Bracers, Boots, and trousers.

New Gear Score: i452

From the Auction House: a new helm. Plus JB breaks up her paired Tooth-Marked Maces, replacing one of the i442 maces with an i483 fist weapon.

New Gear Score: i465

JB prepares for Departure. Hovering in the air is a new quest for a new expansion:

The Dark Portal of Draenor awaits. Here goes . . .

A New Patch Opens Fire

A New Patch Opens Fire

Patch 6.2.3 arrived on Thursday. I didn't know a new patch was coming. For most players, DPS spell damage gets a boost by as much as 10% increased damage. The bad guys should be going down a little faster, which makes JB happy. Another bonus is that gatherers get a very nice 20% boost. That also translates to lower prices on the Auction House, which won't make Happy happy. That assumes the gatherers out there keep sending goods to the Auction House. There are signs of a slow down, but Happy is hopefull things will ramp up again over the weekend.

 Happy had a terrible scare early in the day on Friday. The AH stopped working. Specifically, the Appraisal component, which tells Happy what the prices are for goods and posts the items for sale. The Auctioneer addon that Happy uses was installed in 2014. Happy's first order of business was to install the most current version. That didn't help initially. Happy was near to a breakdown.

 Fortunately, with a little tweaking, things settled out and Happy is back in business - although he has acquired a few new twitches and strange gestures. In between trips to the Auction House, he sits in the bank with his dragon and counts coins. It may take some time for him to get over that scare.

JB will be back in action soon. She is planning her own gathering of herbs in Deepholm. Then she'll head to the Molten Front in Mount Hyjal. Don't expect to see her again until she hits level 89.

Philly has been following JB's adventures with a bemused look on her face. Why is JB going to all this effort to gain a few levels, she wonders? Everyone in the family knows JB will get boosted to level 100 as soon as she is eligible. Philly thought a little harder. Maybe she shouldn't be so critical of JB. If JB fools around and gets to level 100 before the expansion arrives, well, then, JB won't need to get boosted. Hmm. Maybe Philly should keep her mouth shut. Maybe Philly has a chance at that boost? One never knows what might happen.

The rumor mill is spewing some pretty crazy things these days. The latest dire rumor is that Hearnoevils will be killed to make room for a another heavily armed player, this time a warrior. With Jocy at the head of the family, and Tiphaine standing at her elbow these days, there is even an out of this world idea that Happy (who is a warrior, though everyone forgets it) will be Boosted to level 90. It doesn't get any crazier than that!

Hellfire Citadel (Curtesy of Discipline Priest Unbleached)

Hellfire Citadel (Curtesy of Discipline Priest Unbleached)

Hellfire Citadel is the last and most difficult raid in Draenor. Unbleached, now unencumbered by secrecy, raided Hellfire Citadel with her guild last night.

Unbleached knew she would be outclassed by her fellow healers. It had, after all, been over 6 months since she entered the 'hallowed' halls when they first opened. The rest of her guild has had plenty of time to pillage its coffers and she was not even breaking an i score of 700; 720 being the guild minimum now.

She has been able to sneak some idea of untouched fights by going into lfr on her downtime, but not much since lfr is such a clownfest. When she entered the gates and joined in the Hellfire Assault she found it MUCH easier than it used to be. Helps when everyone are tough enough that they eat rocks for breakfast. Gates, down. Iron Reaver, down.

Kormrok down, on second try. This wrapped up the Hellbreach area, and she was not too unknowing of the strats as she feared. She even asked how she ranked in healing (she did not have recount installed) and was happy to see she was 3rd in line of 5 healers, close behind the 2nd.

Next her group moved to the Halls of Blood and took on the Hellfire High Council. Unbleached knew she'd done this with the guild before, but for the life of her could not recall it. Luckily they called out instructions and the fight did not seem too complicated.  The Council was defeated on the first attempt.

Kilrogg Deadeye was next. Unbleached knows they attempted him on Normal but was a bit foggy on if they ever got him down while she was still active. Luckily she was not asked to go into any other realms as a healer. Deadeye had Aknor Steelbringer (the orc whom all people meet as they enter Dreanor) and was trying to bring him to heel as a felslave. Deadeye was down on the first try and Aknor Steelbringer became one of Unbleached followers. Apparently he was happy to be out of there. Halls of Blood completed.

Lastly we moved into the Bastion of Shadows and took on Shadow-Lord Iskar, a humanoid bird with the powers of wind to his call. Not sure how many times we attempted him, 6-10 likely, before we got him down, but he went down in the final 10 minutes of our raid. One of the main things that is deadly to the raid is his tornado. He casts out tornadoes on 2 to 6 players. At the same time two 'eyes' goes out. The players that get the eye need to throw it to a tornadoed individual, which gets them out of it. Once all the tornadoes are done, it is thrown to a designed tank and healer. If you do not take care of the tornadoes you are swept off the ledge to your death. If the tank or healer does not get it at the end, they cannot stop certain bombs from exploding and killing the raid.

There are other things that can go awry and kill everyone, but this is the top one. Luckily there is an addon that makes tossing the eye pretty easy. The only thing though, if you are the last person to get it, is make sure you toss it to the tank/healer. In the end, like I mentioned, we got him down.

Unbleached, at the end of the night, had a few hundred in repair bills, and made out with 4 upgrades. They are not perfect upgrades (she seems to not be getting anything with the crit she wants), but they are better than what she is wearing as a whole.

Bastian of Shadows still has some bosses to be cleared out, and there is one more wing after that before the end boss, but Unbleached may not have good odds of getting to them. She is just going for one night a week raiding, which means first bosses only.

PS: Unbleached reached gear level i704!

Keeping Busy in the New Year of 2016

Keeping Busy in the New Year of 2016

The new year is here. It's 2016. The latest expansion, Warlords of Draenor, was released on 13 November, 2014. Counting fingers, toes, and other digits, that's going on fourteen months ago.  Wild, Jocy, Tiphaine, and Fist are settled in. The every day routine of the garrisons continues. Happy maintains the Auction House. Draenor has reached Boring of legendary size.

The next expansion, Legion, is at least nine months away (September estimate). The family has some time on their hands.

Filling the void so far is Jezibel (JB), volunteering to help out with enchanting mats. Specifically, Happy needs hypnotic dust and embersilk cloth. Traditionally, Happy buys these items and sends them to Wild to be crafted into embersilk bags, which are pretty consistent sellers. The price of hypnotic dust, however, continues to climb. Wild offered an interesting solution. Wild can make gear from his Tailoring profession that can be dis-enchanted into hypnotic dust by his Enchanting profession. It's a tried and true method that serves both professions. What surprised both Happy and Wild is that Happy can makje a lot more gold selling the hypnotic dust directly instead of making bags out of them. The only downside is that bags sell faster than hypnotic dust does, and Happy has to wait longer to get his sales.

What does JB have to do with this? Well, since embersilk cloth is also needed to make the gear for dis-enchanting, she decided to try her hand at farming embersilk in the level 85 elite raid, Bastions of Twilight (BoT). BoT is in the Twilight Highlands, and getting to it took something like thirty minutes. Cleaning out the place solo took less time than the trip. It was a breeze and, as usual, brought back Wild's memories of raiding there. One circuit produced only 94 embersilk, however. She could have reset and gone in again until the system shut her down, but this was just a test run. Happy and JB have the option to farm when embersilk is expensive and buy when its cheap.

JB has her own agenda, of course. JB has already done the quests for Cataclysm, the level 85 expansion, and has no interest in doing any more. She wants to be lazy and just kill things that respawn quickly. She has her eyes on reaching level 90 so she can play in the Timeless Isles of Pandaria. JB loathes Pandaria, and has no interest in leveling there. She's heard a lot about the Timeless Isles, though, and it sounds like fun.

After some research, JB decided to go to Mount Hyjal, a low 80s level land. Her target is the Molten Front and its portal to a raging battlefield that never ends. JB had to work through the initial quest series in order to gain access to the Molten Front. She had it done in an hour, and sailed through the portal.

JB did the daily quests within the molten front and lavishly killed the endless stream of foes. Experience was pretty good while rested XP was in place, and she was wearing all her XP gear to further build experience. For a couple of hours work, JB went from level 87 +77% to Level 88 +12%. Not bad. Once she has her rested XP is full JB will be back in there. XP will continue to decline as she levels, so JB will keep looking for more areas where she can pile up the corpses.

The Unbleached End of Year Report for 2015

The Unbleached End of Year Report for 2015

Note: The Unbleached family (Alliance faction) and the Wild family (Horde Faction) is exchanging year end reports, continuing a long agreement to this exchange in lieu of trying to kill each other. Wild has already presented his in a prior post. This is Unbleached's (UB) report.

In late October I saw my opportunity to dust off my old friends. I was done with traveling, there was a lull at work,  perfect time to stretch some legs. Legs that had not been stretched since July. A lot of things have happened since their sabbatical started. A new raid opened up when they left and now was close to farm mode. Mounts started flying. New gear started dropping, with up to a 695 ilevel, and existing craft gear had their ilevel also increasing (705 for weapons,715 for armor). And most of my toons had an interest in something the new land had to offer.

First things first, get flying. Most of the stuff Unbleached had gotten down. Treasures, check. Exploration, check. Quests, check. Reputation... hum, not a check. Unbleached did not have time to explore the new jungle, and there seemed to be where she needed the reputation, which meant questing. Hum... raid yes, quest no, that is typically UBs motto but that would have to change. She was the best geared toon I had, and would be the quickest to grind with.

She set out with a friend, a bodyguard. Yes, it took UB, or any of my toons, this long to try out a bodyguard but she loved it, mostly. The guard would keep the villians at bay and UB would pew pew from afar. The guard also did enough damage to help speed things up, a nice bonus. Downside is she was a hassle to deal with when you tried to loot or pick herbs, the girl just did not know how to stand to the side of things... ah well.

But UB was not able to grind out ALL the quests each day, so it was a slow grind, about a month and a half to two months of questing before she got her wing license, but when it happened, it was a beautiful thing.

"LOOK! LOOK!" She shouted to Happyface, as he was the only one on to share her joy as she broke out her gyrocopter. Crickets on his side.

"Grrr", she growled, she than made the sound of gold pouring out of a bag.

"Hum..what was that?" said Happy, his attention finally gotten. "Oh! Congratulations."  Apparently he saw this as enough of his duty and went back to counting gold.

Ah well...

The next step was farming. There was a new member to the clan, Jadedwine, a shammy that wants to get out in the world but wants to do it in style. She was wearing three crafted pieces (chest, axe, shield), that needed an upgrade. This required felblight, a green power infused substance that can only be gotten from the jungle by doing gathering (herbs, ore, fish, skinning). Thing is, the whole time that UB had been running around for the last month or two questing, she had gotten only 11.  This would call for a lot of focus farming.

Neekia was volunteered. There really was not much of a choice. She was the only other level 100 that could get there and she was a miner. Three pluses about being a miner, biggest one was there are only two types of ore, where as herbs there are five or six. This means less bag space would be used up. Second plus, the ore is usually on the outer edges, rather than the midst of orc land, easier to get without being attacked.

Lastly, the AH value of ore is 1.50 g to 2.50 g per ore, herbs can regularly dip to under 1g. Since this would be a lot of farming, I wanted a bigger bang for the buck.

Neekia prefers fishing and drinking to fighting or farming but she is a low key gal. If she were to have an Indian name it would be She-who-is-zen.. Yes, I know it is 'Native American', and yes, I know they would not have used the word Zen.. but it gets the point across.
Neekia is a low key gal that is open to helping others with it not ruffling her feathers.

So she set out to farm and farm and farm. There were two trials with this, one was the basic thing of farming, it takes a while. I would hazard to say, on a good day you get one felblight every 10 minutes, or every 75 ore. To upgrade Jadedwine's gear I would need 270 felblight.
Assuming a steady rate, that could mean 45 hours of farming. If I was not using the money I made from the ore to buy free game time, I would have funneled it into buying felblight.

The other trail was Neekia herself. She never cared about her gear. Good enough to get to 100 so she can fish is all she ever worried about. So while UB could take down elites and mobs of adds, Neekia just gets killed.  But like I said, she-who-is-zen never let this bother her. She first tried fishing to get the blight, since this would not likely lead to her death and she could drink at the same time, but after 40 minutes of trying and no blight she was forced to get into mining. She was happy to hit rocks, excited when she got a felblight, and got used to her circuit around the jungle.

While I don't know how long she farmed for the felblight over the last three weeks, she finally got the count she needed yesterday.

So Jadedwine is upgraded, Neekia can go back to just fishing, and UB can finally start sorting out her gear and clean out her closet for raiding.

This week I am 'coming out' and letting the husband know that I am going to start raiding and we should have our own accounts. I think the conversation will go well.