The Battle for the Highlands

The Battle for the Highlands

As for progress, Keya and Java now keep up with their Missions. The others will have to level further and complete certain quests before the Missions table is available.

Keya has been going back and forth between islands trying to find a thread that would guide her to better loot, better quests, and better information about what to tackle. Frustrated by the whole thing, she was mouthing off about how messed up the things were when she felt a tap on her shoulder.

"Raiston Cairn, Recruitment Officer for the 7th fleet, at your service."

Keya stared at him.

"You want action?" Cairn asked.

Keya swallowed, suddenly wary. "I'm not much of a joiner," she said.

"We don't care. Fight with the army, fight with friends, fight solo, we don't care."
 Keya growled. "I'm doing that already. There's nothing here for me."

Cairn shrugged, then said, "Then why not see what the rest of world looks like beyond the islands."

Perhaps it wasn't as simple as that, but that was how Mahakeya joined the 7th fleet army.
A few moments later a loud explosion rocked the town. Keya died with the rest of 7th fleet recruiters.
Other troop ships were still in the harbor, and the 7th fleet soldiers dug out of the wreckage and already began rebuilding.

"This is war," Keya told herself, hardly believing herself. Keya boarded the next troop ship and sailed to the Arathi Highlands. She was going to war against the Horde.

The Castle

This is the first time Keya has been to the Arathi Highlands. Wildshard sometimes talks about the time when Azeroth was the whole world. It's not something Keya understands. To her, there has always been other worlds.

Keya was fascinated, though, and actually looked forward to telling Wild the things she saw and did, and what memories he has, when she gets back.

Once she was at the castle and inside the walls of the Keep, she had some time to look around. She is without flight here. And she's alone.

The Alliance Gets Organized

After a few curt words Keya was cut loose to do whatever took her fancy. She located a corner of the castle where several quests awaited. Keya took the first one, got on her felsaber mount and roamed the country. The Highlands are spider infested, but were a minor irritant. More important was the house and barn on the property . . .  and the swarm of horde soldiers that had taken up residence there. At first she was the only Alliance around. Testing the strength of the enemy, Keya tagged a group of three. Immediately, two of the soldiers advanced on her. Keya fought them off, but she kept taking damage. It was then she saw the arrows from the third soldier. Keya was confident that she could kill all three, but the group was far more organized than expected. More soldiers arrived, and they took notice of Keya.

She tried several times to breach the security but she faced near death several times. Each time she thought she'd cleared a spot to gain some ground, more soliders arrived and drove her back. The goal she'd been given was to kill 20 of the soldiers. She managed just six, at great peril.

 Soon after, though, other alliance contingents began to arrive both solo and in groups. Where  possible, Keya waded in with the groups and helped in the kills while filling her own kill numbers. It wasn't organized, and nobody grouped up that she could see, but eventually Keya got her quota and returned back to the castle.

She was a bit stunned when she saw her reward. She gained a level 340 pair of leggings that jumped her gear score from i282 to i285, which is a significant upgrade.

She'll surely want to try her hand again later on. One thing she won't be doing is hanging around the recruitment table. That could be fatal.
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Living Without Addons

Since the latest crash of the Jarte Plus program I use (and stubbornly intend to keep using) Chaitee has had to get used to things like a Mailbox that is nothing but, well, a mailbox. Oh sure, one can still send and receive things through the mail, and Chaitee is getting used to it. She is also using the plain vanilla Auction House. Chaitee had to brush up on her arithmetic to ensure her figuring was correct when making buys and sells. It takes more time and more back and forth to ensure good deals are made, but it's functional. She is also getting used to 24 hour bids and buys instead of 48 hour blocks. Otherwise she is leaving things alone to see just how it goes over a few days. There is at least the possibilty that addons aren't really needed.

Get Back in the Saddle!

Get Back in the Saddle!

Keya is frustrated. Quests are becoming harder to find in Baralas. The Islands are kind of hit or miss. Once past the initial quests and settling of flight paths, the available quests are pretty slim. She thought she had a good one in Zandalar, but the quester later admitted that he wanted her to learn Archeology! That's a fine thing to do, but it isn't on Keya's agenda, at least not for now.

Keya has footprints on almost every island now and is still unhappy at how few quests are available. She even tried running amok among the enemies that are strung all across the islands. No quests turned up and she left maybe a hundred attackers to out pace before she ended the foolishness.

Now that Keya has finished leveling to 120, she will focuse on gathering azerite to get AP.

Keya will have to get up to speed on The War Campaign. That seems to be the focus of the 8.0/8.1 patch.

One of the Lousy "Bases"

Keya did find a few battles to join in on Vol'dun. There are special groups gathered specifically to farm Azerite, the be all item, the basis for all the Artifact Power (AP) that fuels the worlds, or so it seems. Whenever such a flow of azerite pops up, so does the players go after it.

Keya is now at AP Level 10, 49% toward the next level.

Her gear score inched up to i281. Then she decided to get cute. Keya had some extra gold laying around and decided to do something about her weapons. She has a pair of wargaives, a level 281 and a level 241. She checked the AH and decided to buy another warglaive that is level 266. All went well, except that when she equipped the new warglaive, her gear score only went up by one, from 281 to 282. What did it cost her? 1,100 gold. Sigh.

Dinosaurs!

 

Now Keya has a funny tale to tell. She'd noticed the quests in the darkened areas of the wharf. She'd had encounters with some of the riff-raff on those piers. More than a few were not happy with Keya winding her way into areas out of bounds for such as her. A few tried to purswade her to go back to safer places. Keya killed a few to show her intentn. Others tried the whirling warglaives with no better luck. The dead were hauled away, stripped of their meager belongings. Eventually she was left alone. When she ran out boardwalk she slipped into the water and found a ladder that led up to the high hull of a large ship. At last she had found her target.

Keya leaped onto the deck of the boat . . .  and then stopped. Confused. Then she realized what she had done. She'd fought and swam her way to her target, only to find that the target she was hunting was the very ship she was on! Keya was pretty embarrassed. No one ribbed her for it, though. One look and anyone nearby made sure to get far away from those fiery eyes.

Keya Loves Her Warglaives

Reset Warcraft Failure

Reset Warcraft Failure

This morning I reset Warcraft following Blizzard's direction. The reset DID NOT fix the frozen state of Missions. Note that every character is in this state (all 9 of those with a Missions tab). When/if a Bliz tech gets to me I'm sure I'll  be told to do the same process AGAIN and then we'll see what we see. The game is still playable, at least. The bare bones Auction House looks forlorn. Not sure what other factors Keya and family may encounter before this gets straightened out. And then I'll have to wonder if I can even use the addon Auction House. Would it freeze up the Missions again? That's a scary thought.

Horde retribution paladin Jocelyne asked if she could help. She's Level 110 but has not yet started "The War Campaign." Jocy is to "Report to Nathanos Blightcaller aboard the Banshee's Wail in Zuldazar."

NOTE: At this stage there is no "Missions" shown in the upper right. One is guessing that Missions will appear once the War Campagin quest is begun.

Jocy has not started the War Campaign yet but she has done some questing. She also still has a Garrison Hearthstone.

Jocy hopes things clear up soon. She is 76% of the way to iLevel 111. Her gear score is 194, which is pretty darn good. Of course, as a "Boost baby" her gear score started at an elevated 176.

Well. The answer to the Missions problem has finally been solved. The "Table" that Keya kept coming to was the wrong table. That table was at the prow of the idled ship. The table Keya never even saw was all but hidden by other characters, ship workers, and other quests.

When Keya finally got to the "right" table she was able to complete the Missions Quest. Keya asked Java to test it out as well. The Mission quest was completed without a problem. Note that Tiphaine also tried it but she is not far enough along. There was no table for her. She still needs to go to the Map and get the quests there.

The bottom line is that the first two techs who tried to help just gave me the usual run of the mill. The third tech figured out the problem was not understanding a process in the game. He immediately knew what my problem was, showed me how to fix it, and then made sure it worked. Super Kudos for that tech.

The reset was never really needed. Now I have to wonder whether to re-install the addons.

A New Challange Awaits

A New Challange Awaits

Keya hasn't had time to stay in one place for long, but as the time comes for her to finish her leveling, she'll need a place to call home. Dalaran is always available, but she is looking for something closer to the action. Almost against her wishes, she went ahead and took the Sun Harbor Inn at Baralas as her official home.

Keya continued to plow through everything that came her way, from battling elite giants throwing boulders, to nearly dying from masses of rats almost as large as Keya, to her final battleground against an old enemy, the water wraiths that populate almost every shoreline.

And then Mahakeya turned the page and earned iLevel 120. At last. At a pig farm, of all places.

There is no rest for the weary, though. Keya immediately went to check if her Missions had come online now that she is Level 120. Unfortunately nothing has changed. It has also been confirmed that all ten of of those level 100 to 120 have the same problem with Missions. This being Saturday, a Bliz tech expects to me sometime tomorrow. But she has a ticket, and they do always, eventually, get to me.

Later. Sigh. Game Master JyaDairia got back to me on my ticket regarding problems with Missions. The supposed answer? Clear your interface and update your addons.

The issue is that I had already done that before I even contacted Blizzard. I'll dutifully do it again tomorrow (what else can I do?) and if it still isn't working Keya will ping on the Game Master again. All I have is Auctioneer, Postal, and TomTom. Plus, I don't see how Missions affects addons. Sigh again.

Here is the specific addons as listed. I of course have my Cache, Interface, and WTF files. Under Interface is Addons. Auctioneer has ten elements, plus BeanCounter, Enchantrix, Informant, Slidebar, and Stubby. Independant addons are Postal and TomTom.

Having a Dark Moment

I love playing Warcraft, and leveling and improving my character is the #1 thing I like about the game. The second most fun for me is playing the Auction House. Take that away and much of the fun goes away with it.

As Wildshard (and me) get older there are things that once were easy to comprehend and do and now have become harder. Changing computer settings, locating and installing addons, etc, add a layer of difficulty Wild did not expect. On the other hand, I think Blizzard itself has discovered it has limits. The Tech working with me doesn't know WHY the game is stuck where it is, all the tech can do is wipe the slate and have poor Wild try to fix things based on the advice of the tech.

The Dreadwake

The Dreadwake

The Dreadwake is a flying ship. It arrived this morning as a bonus for being such a good customer. Unfortunately, it doesn't do anything and can't carry anything. It's also relatively large, good for getting in the way. Pretty, but useless. Oh, and the thing sinks when taken over the water. One would think that with all these ISLANDS! Keya has to contend with she should at least have a boat that doesn't sink. Unless one is pretending to be a submarine. The Makers of WoW should get more creative developers.

Keya is now iLevel 119. She's begun her final leveling, now at 12% toward iLevel 120. Her gear score is now i271, and she's weilding an i281 warglaives.

Back at Fort Victory in Nazmir. She found Nessingway, which was quite a trip that included large pools of ravenous level 120 fish. Dinosaurs are back in vogue. A large swath of territy was mapped out. Too bad that most of the terrain was lacking quests to kill them, even with five flight paths discovered. Overall, Nessingway was a disappointment. Hopefully he'll come up with something better.

Quests in general are lacking as well. Despite at least two hours of aggresive hunting, Keya was only able to improve her progress from 15% to 21%. That makes it still a long way from reaching her goal.

A huge chunk of the area is spread across The Necropolis. The area is swamped, literally, with enemies. But currently Keya has none . . . zero quests available. The same lack of quests haunts Vol'Dun as well.

Sorry, there was a crash today and much of what was written can't be retrieved. It was all stuff about the islands, which Keya hates anyway. More to say if other issues pop up.

Keya had to go back to Dustvar in Baralas to find more quests. She did have two very entertaining but scary confrontations. It was late into the evening and Keya was getting tired. She'd been trailing a number of mobs, killing as she went, and started to get nervous when the targets turned on her and attacked. Her killing spree turned into an escape when mobs descended on her and she realized she had attacked a Horde sanctuary. She managed to escape, and yelled epithets as she smartly retreated.

 The second confrontation took place at  a deep cavern where heavy mining was in progress. Keya fought off enemy miner's in droves, each time going deeper into the mine to find lost miners and disrupting the enemies that flooded in. She tried several times to at least free the miners, but the odds were overwhelming. Apparently she needed outside help and there was no one else around.

Still, Keya made progress. She is now 51% of the way to iLevel 120. Her gear score is a fine i275. Artifact Power is Level 9. Lucky for her that ALL of her new armor was still intact when the crash occured.

PS - No pics this time, having a little trouble with that. Should have it rectified next time around.

Where Will It End

Where Will It End

Another Island . . .  And Another . . .  And Another . . .

Keya gave up keeping track of the inummerable islands that she has flown to, swam to, dug beneath the earth to reach, etc, and the list never seems to end. Add further confusion that every damned place starts with a Z in the name, such Zan, Zun, Zig, Zip, etc etc. Mostly Keya has no idea where she is and mostly doesn't care as long as there are quests to finish and things to kill.

PS - One might notice that Keya roared past iLevel 117 without a single by your leave. Those islands made her crazy and she's now stalking iLevel 118.

Her one great fear is having nothing to do. She's 35% of the way to iLevel 119 now (yes, she did another blow by at iLevel 118). Her Artifact Power (AP) is Level 9. How many levels are there? Keya doesn't know. All she knows is that her Missions now have a third Follower but no quests and she still can't figure how to use her War Resources.

Keya finally forced herself to take a break, though. Maybe if she does some mundane work her juices will jump start her into something worthwhile. After getting drunk . . . dang it, she wasn't going to do that . . . .

Later, and more sober, Keya took another look at her bulging bags. Yes, Keya knows about transmog and the like, but she's always favored having the actual gear in her bags. Even when she was trying out transmoging she was never happy with what the "Appearances" showed her than what the actual item showed. Wildshard was the first to figure out that there was no reason to keep gear that wouldn't be mogged, such as rings, trinkets, etc, anything that wasn't visible when equipped. That idea has expanded in the family to keeping only those things that you can use, and keep only the best version of an item. That's the general idea. Legendary and similar type gear for keepsakes also have a place. Even with that culling Keya still has way too much gear laying about.

Island Expedition and Other Things

Keya Matches Java

Given full rein by Tiphaine, Mahakeya has made blistering progress. She is now iLevel 116, the same as Java. Her gear score is i242.

There is a bit of sadness as well as frustration. The sadness comes from the fact that the legendary shoes "The Sentinel's Eternal Refuge" may be retired soon. The i240 shoes have competition with a drop "Anglin' Arts Treads" at i245 that also sports fishing skill. Keya loves her fishing. The rub is that her current legiondary shoes also has a special gadget - with every kill Java increases her speed up to five times. Keya can't give that up, so the legendary will remain in service. For now.

It does warrant a comment. Keya has always had a leg up (get it?) by earning two legendary pieces of gear far earlier than anyone else in the family, plus her fishing legendary. All of that was earned, but still, it kept her ahead of the rest, gear-wise. She no longer has that advantage.

Java, who reached iLevel 116 BEFORE Keya, should be given a chance to step ahead of Keya. But Keya is so much fun she'll get special treatment. At least until the rest of the family start thinking about murder.

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Island Expedition and Other Things

Keya set sail from the docks at on a expedition to an island to collect more goodies needed for the war effort. It was a fast sail and assault. Keya ripped through the unprepared islanders. They never had a chance. There was no leveling, but Keya did increase her War Resources. She has 286 (max is 300). Keya still can't figure out how to use it, though.

Hey! Yells Keya! Why is Java's picture on MY comments!?
Tiphaine weighed in. Because Java was first to iLevel 116. Keya, you were second. Get over it.

Keya smoulders. She's utterly tired with Boralus. How can she get back to the other lands out there? Okay, so she went back to Vol'Dun. In Zandalar. Shatterstone Harbor is dead. Well, everything out in that wasteland is level 120 and nodbody was carrying any quests to follow.

There's a flight path - but it only goes to one place - The Sancuary of the Devoted. She's been there, too, but maybe something has changed. There are only these two flight paths. So, the enemy is still battling, but not against Keya, unless she gets in the way. Again, there is nothing to do and nowhere to go. Sigh. Nazmir is a dud, too. Keya will have to go back to Boralus and try again.

Oh wait. I forgot about Fort Victory. On the other side of the coast. Been there, Nasty place. But I bet there are quests. DOT DOT DOT ... Nope, no quests. Looks like Keya will go exploring.

PS - One thing concerns Keya in these island worlds. She had left the shelter of the Flight Path and trotted out to see what there was to see in the neighborhood. She decided to test her strength against a lone, i120 critter that grinned evily at her. Keya struck. Five minutes later Keya had stopped trying to kill it and was struggling to keep it from killing her. For the first time in recent memory, Keya had to flee. And the critter wasn't even an elite. Sobering.

Keya moved on to other things that still included killing. She spent way too much time on an island heavily populated with mechanical monsters that seemed to spawn as fast as they could be killed. After awhile she more or less gave up with her quests still unfulfilled. At least she was still in the world of Boralas and not in some far away world.

Burial of a Weapon. Keya tends to say prayers over her special weapons and gear, particularly when she knows she'll miss them. She weeped over a burial recently, this time over her Legendary Cinidaria, the Simbiote, a level 240 waist. Her replacement is an i271 belt that raised her gear score to i248. Keya has only two major pieces of gear to upgrade, a 225 shoulder piece which Keya can't seem to find a replacement for yet, and her beloved Aldrachi Warblades, which are rated only 212.
The good part is her determination to reach the next goal.

She is 36% of the way to level 117.