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.
Wednesday, November 28, 2012
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.
Monday, November 19, 2012
Weekend (18 Nov) - The Clothes Horse
Weekend (18 Nov) - The Clothes Horse
Fist admits that she likes clothes. That passion has been easily fed by Pandaria, which offers a lot of different looks. Half the time she should be questing she is in Org sorting through every wearable item to see how it looks on her. Her questing in the Jade Forest has brought a new ensemble of gear called Deepwoods. Frankly, I think it's horrible looking. Fist would have to agree, but hey, it's a set! She couldn't let it go. She already has a dozen weapons of various sorts. Most of those have unique looks, though, so she feels justified keeping those.
The problem is finding room for everything. Happy choked on the cost, but he already had bought Fist the largest bag available (26 slots) to hold the THREE sets of gear that she carried around with her. She also has two bank slots (totaling 32 slots) for banked gear that is already full and overflowing. Fist almost bought two 22-slot bags on a whim, but at the last minute asked Happy to check prices. They were high. Too high. Plus, Wild can make those bags for even less - if Happy can get a break on the price of bolts of embersilk. So far Fist is holding off, but she wants those bags! Sigh.
Fist is also unhappy with her trinkets. Lao gave her a great, socketed trinket she is dying to use, but she has to get to level 87 first. Her other trinkets don't have much in the way of +agi, and she has made do with one trinket that has 406 mastery. Fist has another 406 crit trinket, but it doesn't seem better than the 167 agi trinket it would replace. Prices for the 512 agi trinkets have climbed and Happy won't release that kind of money to Fist. Happy could see visions of expensive clothing stores dancing in Fist's head.
Once she closed her closet doors, Fist graduated from the Pandaria zone of Jade Forest to the Valley of the Four Winds on Saturday night. The quest gear rose from the i372 older quests, to i384 level quests, and in the Four Winds has starting dropping i399 gear. Since Fist is in mostly i415 gear purchased from the auction House, she isn't keeping much of anything but trinkets from questing. She is certainly getting some interesting trinkets, though. The stats themselves are just ho hum, but it's the extras that get attention. Many of them have an "Equip" ability that summons a pet or has some silly feature put there just for fun. Fist loves them.
Fist's first impression of the Four Winds is that of a huge farm that has been allowed to be run over by varmits of every sort. The quests are clever and interesting, if nonsensical at times. Such as the quest where Fist collects a turnip, a bucket, and a third thing, and delivers them to a farm house by having a cow kick the items down a lane. Fist played "animal control" many times, rooting out various critters who'd gotten into the fields and gardens. I do think the varmits were a bit overdone, though. They are everywhere, larger ones and packs of smaller ones. There is no way to avoid them, so getting to quest areas means killing them in droves, which does slow things down.
Fist ran across an 85 elite varmit in a cave that gave Fist a pretty tough battle. It didn't hit very hard (it's really nasty weapon was a circular spray that Fist could avoid), but it had a ton of health and Fist figured it would be a long fight. Partway through the fight, though, an npc showed up and helped Fist burn it down. At times seems it seems as if the game is rigged against the elite mobs. Fist is still looking to tackle an elite in a fair fight.
Fit started the evening 72% of the way to level 87. When the night ended Fist had DINGED! to level 87. Even better than reaching level 87, Fist finally got to equip and use her Ghost Iron Dragonling trinket that Lao got for her!
Fist has also continued to improve on her leather working skills. Her great need now is savage leather. Lao has provided some, picked up while pvping, I believe, which is much appreciated. Fist has farmed tons of it already, as well. She went to The Pale Roost in Deepholm. There are elite dragons there that are constantly spawning for a quest. Fist doesn't do the quest, she just kills the dragons for the savage leather.
Fist spent a very long time there, mostly by herself. There were two cross-realm players that showed up for awhile. One was a hunter, and Fist passed on skinning his kills at first, figuring he was a leather worker, too. But he didn't skin his kills, so Fist started skinning them. The other player was a mage. We talked a bit while working the dragons. He was after green gear drops he could disenchant for his enchanting profession. Those drops were fairly rare. I don't envy that poor mage leveling enchanting. What a pain. Fist did not interfere with their kills, but kept busy skinning the kills the other two got. Fist made satisfactory progress on her leather working, reaching skill 485. She's going to have to go back to the Pale Roost, though, as she still needs stacks and stacks of savage leather.
Fist did go back to the Pale Roost a third time on Sunday. When she was done with her farming and her leather working, her skill had risen to 546 (600 max). She is now farming for the Pandaria leather called sha-touched leather and exotic leather. Ironically, the leather gear she can craft now is the same i415 gear that she had been buying off the Auction House. At least she should get some of that gold back by selling her crafted items.
Oh, and unfortunately, the screen lockup is back, despite removing nearly every addon. It's very frustrating. For that hour or so on Sunday evening I used the backup computer. So far, no problems there, but I really dislike having to have both computers on all the time, and the backup PC is slower.
Fist admits that she likes clothes. That passion has been easily fed by Pandaria, which offers a lot of different looks. Half the time she should be questing she is in Org sorting through every wearable item to see how it looks on her. Her questing in the Jade Forest has brought a new ensemble of gear called Deepwoods. Frankly, I think it's horrible looking. Fist would have to agree, but hey, it's a set! She couldn't let it go. She already has a dozen weapons of various sorts. Most of those have unique looks, though, so she feels justified keeping those.
The problem is finding room for everything. Happy choked on the cost, but he already had bought Fist the largest bag available (26 slots) to hold the THREE sets of gear that she carried around with her. She also has two bank slots (totaling 32 slots) for banked gear that is already full and overflowing. Fist almost bought two 22-slot bags on a whim, but at the last minute asked Happy to check prices. They were high. Too high. Plus, Wild can make those bags for even less - if Happy can get a break on the price of bolts of embersilk. So far Fist is holding off, but she wants those bags! Sigh.
Fist is also unhappy with her trinkets. Lao gave her a great, socketed trinket she is dying to use, but she has to get to level 87 first. Her other trinkets don't have much in the way of +agi, and she has made do with one trinket that has 406 mastery. Fist has another 406 crit trinket, but it doesn't seem better than the 167 agi trinket it would replace. Prices for the 512 agi trinkets have climbed and Happy won't release that kind of money to Fist. Happy could see visions of expensive clothing stores dancing in Fist's head.
Once she closed her closet doors, Fist graduated from the Pandaria zone of Jade Forest to the Valley of the Four Winds on Saturday night. The quest gear rose from the i372 older quests, to i384 level quests, and in the Four Winds has starting dropping i399 gear. Since Fist is in mostly i415 gear purchased from the auction House, she isn't keeping much of anything but trinkets from questing. She is certainly getting some interesting trinkets, though. The stats themselves are just ho hum, but it's the extras that get attention. Many of them have an "Equip" ability that summons a pet or has some silly feature put there just for fun. Fist loves them.
Fist's first impression of the Four Winds is that of a huge farm that has been allowed to be run over by varmits of every sort. The quests are clever and interesting, if nonsensical at times. Such as the quest where Fist collects a turnip, a bucket, and a third thing, and delivers them to a farm house by having a cow kick the items down a lane. Fist played "animal control" many times, rooting out various critters who'd gotten into the fields and gardens. I do think the varmits were a bit overdone, though. They are everywhere, larger ones and packs of smaller ones. There is no way to avoid them, so getting to quest areas means killing them in droves, which does slow things down.
Fist ran across an 85 elite varmit in a cave that gave Fist a pretty tough battle. It didn't hit very hard (it's really nasty weapon was a circular spray that Fist could avoid), but it had a ton of health and Fist figured it would be a long fight. Partway through the fight, though, an npc showed up and helped Fist burn it down. At times seems it seems as if the game is rigged against the elite mobs. Fist is still looking to tackle an elite in a fair fight.
Fit started the evening 72% of the way to level 87. When the night ended Fist had DINGED! to level 87. Even better than reaching level 87, Fist finally got to equip and use her Ghost Iron Dragonling trinket that Lao got for her!
Fist has also continued to improve on her leather working skills. Her great need now is savage leather. Lao has provided some, picked up while pvping, I believe, which is much appreciated. Fist has farmed tons of it already, as well. She went to The Pale Roost in Deepholm. There are elite dragons there that are constantly spawning for a quest. Fist doesn't do the quest, she just kills the dragons for the savage leather.
Fist spent a very long time there, mostly by herself. There were two cross-realm players that showed up for awhile. One was a hunter, and Fist passed on skinning his kills at first, figuring he was a leather worker, too. But he didn't skin his kills, so Fist started skinning them. The other player was a mage. We talked a bit while working the dragons. He was after green gear drops he could disenchant for his enchanting profession. Those drops were fairly rare. I don't envy that poor mage leveling enchanting. What a pain. Fist did not interfere with their kills, but kept busy skinning the kills the other two got. Fist made satisfactory progress on her leather working, reaching skill 485. She's going to have to go back to the Pale Roost, though, as she still needs stacks and stacks of savage leather.
Fist did go back to the Pale Roost a third time on Sunday. When she was done with her farming and her leather working, her skill had risen to 546 (600 max). She is now farming for the Pandaria leather called sha-touched leather and exotic leather. Ironically, the leather gear she can craft now is the same i415 gear that she had been buying off the Auction House. At least she should get some of that gold back by selling her crafted items.
Oh, and unfortunately, the screen lockup is back, despite removing nearly every addon. It's very frustrating. For that hour or so on Sunday evening I used the backup computer. So far, no problems there, but I really dislike having to have both computers on all the time, and the backup PC is slower.
Thursday, November 15, 2012
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.
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.
Monday, November 12, 2012
Weekend (11 Nov) - Fist Fixes Things - She Hopes
Weekend (11 Nov) - Fist Fixes Things - She Hopes
This is mix and match of a few things.
MM2 Raiding Rules: Fist is a long way from becoming raid-ready. It doesn't hurt to review the requirements set by the guild, though, so that those requirements can be worked toward. The general rules of thumb for raiding haven't changed. This is more about expectations for gear, experience, etc in Mists of Pandaria.
MM2's Current Raid is Mogu'shan Vaults
Minimum gear ilevel - 455, for all specs (Fist is at i397)
Minimum DPS on raid target dummy - 43.5k DPS sustained
DPS only - Complete a Scenario without a tank or healer
Tanks - personal evaluation by the raid leader, no numbers given
Healers - personal evaluation by the raid leader, no numbers given
Before any of that raiding stuff, though, testing is needed to try to fix the screen lockups that are still occurring. In Pandaria, on Saturday, Fist didn't last five minutes before the screen froze. I opened a ticket with Blizzard. The GM, Ekield, sent me to an article about generic computer crash errors. Sigh.
And of course, their method of "fixing" a problem is as heavy handed as they come - delete game folders (cache, wtf, interface), update sound and video drivers, use selective startup to disable ALL programs except for Windows and WoW, and if those things don't work, delete and reinstall the game. In other words, the problem couldn't be Blizzard's fault - it's obviously something else. Anything else. Needless to say, Ekield got a pretty poor report card. Not that it will do any good. And of course again, the ticket is now considered "resolved" and they've washed their hands of the issue, despite the fact that the actual problem hasn't been resolved. I bet they don't even have a category called "fixed".
I did check the video card drivers. The drivers are up to date. I then removed all addons except for Dominos, which manages buttons and bars. Fist played for about thirty minutes without a crash. I added Xperl, which aids targeting. It doesn't help that Fist is doing a quest string that is bugged. The advice on that issue is to abandon the quest, reload the UI, and take the quest again. Progress is very slow, having to reload several times for each step of the quest chain. Still no screen lock, though.
Fist went back at it Sunday night. The lockups were back. After the second one, I removed Xperl. Fist then played for more than an hour and did not get any lockups. I'm pretty sure now that Xperl is the culprit. I'll start loading more addons slowly. Xperl is nice to have, but I can live without it.
The bugged series of quests all begin with "Scouting Report: " with additional titling for the specific quest. Each quest involves an npc who reports to Fist. There is a set piece for each quest, and Fist is then put literally into the shoes of the reporting npc. Fist plays the part of that npc and completes the scenario through some kind of action. It is an interesting process. I'd give 'em points for creativity, but it's badly designed. As mentioned, they tend to be buggy, requiring multiple attempts before successfully completing them. The view tends to be static, and in one of them I had to physically move around my user interface to expose things required - the scenario used a static set that I could not affect. Nice try, but they need to try harder to make these feel more like I'm actually there instead of a bystander, and give the npc/player more flexibility to interact with the environment.
I might have gotten more out of the lore of Pandaria while questing if Fist had entered Pandaria with lesser gear, so that quest rewards would be more meaningful, and the encounters would feel more dangerous. As it is, it's still fun seeing the new areas and puzzling out the quests, but I don't really feel engaged in the storyline.
Fist graduated to her third town in the Jaded Forest. This one is Dawn's Blossom, even bigger than the other two.
She DINGed! to level 86 with little fanfare and is now 8% of the way to level 87.
However, some fanfare would seem to be warranted. It is hard to imagine, but Fist has now eclipsed even Wild as the senior member of the Wild family. When Fist was born, that goal did not even seem possible.
Wild is happy for her and promises a ceremony. But more likely that toasting and honoring won't come until she reaches level 90.
This is mix and match of a few things.
MM2 Raiding Rules: Fist is a long way from becoming raid-ready. It doesn't hurt to review the requirements set by the guild, though, so that those requirements can be worked toward. The general rules of thumb for raiding haven't changed. This is more about expectations for gear, experience, etc in Mists of Pandaria.
MM2's Current Raid is Mogu'shan Vaults
Minimum gear ilevel - 455, for all specs (Fist is at i397)
Minimum DPS on raid target dummy - 43.5k DPS sustained
DPS only - Complete a Scenario without a tank or healer
Tanks - personal evaluation by the raid leader, no numbers given
Healers - personal evaluation by the raid leader, no numbers given
Before any of that raiding stuff, though, testing is needed to try to fix the screen lockups that are still occurring. In Pandaria, on Saturday, Fist didn't last five minutes before the screen froze. I opened a ticket with Blizzard. The GM, Ekield, sent me to an article about generic computer crash errors. Sigh.
And of course, their method of "fixing" a problem is as heavy handed as they come - delete game folders (cache, wtf, interface), update sound and video drivers, use selective startup to disable ALL programs except for Windows and WoW, and if those things don't work, delete and reinstall the game. In other words, the problem couldn't be Blizzard's fault - it's obviously something else. Anything else. Needless to say, Ekield got a pretty poor report card. Not that it will do any good. And of course again, the ticket is now considered "resolved" and they've washed their hands of the issue, despite the fact that the actual problem hasn't been resolved. I bet they don't even have a category called "fixed".
I did check the video card drivers. The drivers are up to date. I then removed all addons except for Dominos, which manages buttons and bars. Fist played for about thirty minutes without a crash. I added Xperl, which aids targeting. It doesn't help that Fist is doing a quest string that is bugged. The advice on that issue is to abandon the quest, reload the UI, and take the quest again. Progress is very slow, having to reload several times for each step of the quest chain. Still no screen lock, though.
Fist went back at it Sunday night. The lockups were back. After the second one, I removed Xperl. Fist then played for more than an hour and did not get any lockups. I'm pretty sure now that Xperl is the culprit. I'll start loading more addons slowly. Xperl is nice to have, but I can live without it.
The bugged series of quests all begin with "Scouting Report: " with additional titling for the specific quest. Each quest involves an npc who reports to Fist. There is a set piece for each quest, and Fist is then put literally into the shoes of the reporting npc. Fist plays the part of that npc and completes the scenario through some kind of action. It is an interesting process. I'd give 'em points for creativity, but it's badly designed. As mentioned, they tend to be buggy, requiring multiple attempts before successfully completing them. The view tends to be static, and in one of them I had to physically move around my user interface to expose things required - the scenario used a static set that I could not affect. Nice try, but they need to try harder to make these feel more like I'm actually there instead of a bystander, and give the npc/player more flexibility to interact with the environment.
I might have gotten more out of the lore of Pandaria while questing if Fist had entered Pandaria with lesser gear, so that quest rewards would be more meaningful, and the encounters would feel more dangerous. As it is, it's still fun seeing the new areas and puzzling out the quests, but I don't really feel engaged in the storyline.
Fist graduated to her third town in the Jaded Forest. This one is Dawn's Blossom, even bigger than the other two.
She DINGed! to level 86 with little fanfare and is now 8% of the way to level 87.
However, some fanfare would seem to be warranted. It is hard to imagine, but Fist has now eclipsed even Wild as the senior member of the Wild family. When Fist was born, that goal did not even seem possible.
Wild is happy for her and promises a ceremony. But more likely that toasting and honoring won't come until she reaches level 90.
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