Old Raids and New Pets

One of my favorite parts about the new patch is the ability to enter raids even if you're just by yourself. No more trying to wrangle guildies into a raid group or messing with a free trial account but instead you can just waltz right into a raid instance. One of my other favorite parts is the introduction of new pets to old raid bosses. I just had to start farming for them right away.

The first place I went to was Naxx. I love Naxx but I think part of that is nostalgia for my first raid. But it's still an amazing place with some really unique bosses. I went to the Construct quarter first because the boss I thought I would have the most trouble with was Gluth. Patch and Grobbulus and Gluth did give me a bit of trouble. I attempted to kill him as frost because I wasn't sure I could do more dps as blood than Gluth healed  but it also meant my survivability wasn't as strong. My first two attempts I didn't kill him but I got close enough I decided to shift a few points in my talents to see if I could get just a little more survivability and dps. It managed to be just enough and was a pretty close fight. The rest of Naxx went fairly well and I got some 'shrooms to drop. A pet 'shroom anyway.

After Naxx I thought I'd take things easy and went to the Molten Core. It went fairly quickly and I managed to gain a Blazing Rune and a Mark of Flames. I was pleasantly surprised to get two pets from one raid and I'm really glad I didn't stop after getting the first pet.

I figured since I was close I'd give Blackwing Lair a try. I wasn't sure if the first boss was possible to solo or not. I've heard it was impossible but that Blizzard had made some nerfs to make it easier to solo so I figured it was worth a try. I headed to the orb and realized I wasn't attuned. So I needed a quick trip to Upper Spire and you can't go to Upper Spire without killing 50 Whelps.

Atunement accomplished I headed into Blackwing Lair and made my first attempt at the first fight.

And than tried again.

And again.

And just once again.

I decided to call it quits for the night. But overall it had been a pretty good run. 3 pets, several achievements, and a nice haul of transmog gear from Naxx.

Oops!

My family has a saying, "It's only lost until you replace it or it's no longer needed." And lately I've noticed that I seem to have lost quite a few things. My sewing scissors, the installation disc for my printer, my ipod, and most recently my authenticator. I was pretty excited about the new patch but it seems I won't be playing it for awhile. I've done a very though search of my room and it is now incredibly clean but haven't managed to locate it. So I've decided I might as well just begin the process of removing the authenticator from my account. It's supposed to take about 24 hours to 2 days before I'll hear anything more about it from Blizzard.

So I guess I'm stuck watching Doctor Who and sewing and wondering when these items will decide to make a surprise appearance.

Heard back from Blizzard and I'm able to access my account again. Although the authenticator is still missing.

Been awhile

I haven't written in weeks and I keep feeling guilty for not writing so I put it off. Procrastination gets me every time.

I haven't been doing much on my main but have instead made myself another death knight. Three weeks ago I saw that laid-back raid for last Sunday was to be a horde firelands run and I was excited until I remembered that I would have to go as a druid since Arita was my only high level hordie. So I made a death knight. I had a half-baked notion that I would get her leveled in time but I should mention that I don't have any heirlooms on that server. I figured I'd give it a go and if I made it it would be great and if I didn't I'd still have the druid. I'm happy to say that Tyledres made it to lvl 86 in time for the Firelands run. While we didn't get Ragnaros killed we did get to see the fight. It was further than I've been before. And she managed to blow up several times rather splendidly.

So now I can confuse people by being Tyledres the human or Tyledres the undead. The dead undead that went splat. She's still got a few levels to go but I'm not in a rush to get to 90.

NonWow discussion

I decided I wanted to edit this a little bit. After some thought I realized I had told a tale I wasn't really comfortable telling to a rather unknown audience. So I decided to remove the tale and replace it with a different one.

I didn't play much Wow this week. And when I did I wasn't spending much time on my death knight main. I guess it's a bit of a slump. Instead I've been spending my free time cross-stitching and milking cows.

So a bit about the stitching first. When I was younger my mom taught me how to cross-stitch and it's a hobby I've enjoyed since then. Typically I work on stitching while watching movies, tv, or listening to music and I find it peaceful. But last year when I moved from the dorms back home I put my latest cross-stitch work in a tote and I haven't found it back. Until last week. Finally finding it back I've been obsessed with stitching. And I finally got half-way though the pattern. It's a fantasy sampler and I think it's really gorgeous. There's a lot of mixing threads, quarter stitches, and metallic thread. And the designer of this pattern is one of my favorites as well. The works are so beautiful and detailed. This is my second one of her works that I'm working on. The other was a dragon called the Guardian. It was the second one that I started and it took me more years than I'd care to admit to finish it. The fantasy sampler is coming along much faster because I think I'm better organized, faster, and have a better understanding of what I'm doing.

Fantasy Sampler

The Guardian

My other unusual activity has been milking cows. I'm not sure if I've mentioned this previously so I'll just say that I grew up on a dairy farm. I'm still working on the growing up thing but I haven't had to milk cows much since I started college. It's well known in my family that I don't enjoy milking cows and it's one profession that I've never considered pursuing. So as long as I was spending more time away from home than at it I was exempt from milking. Recently my dad has decided to get robotic milkers which will be amazing but they are still three weeks or so away from being ready to use them. In the meantime we're still milking cows in the old double-eight parlor. Which is fine except that my uncle who does the afternoon milking got injured recently and now my dad is doing both milkings along with my uncle's chores and making sure everything is going well over in the new addition. He's been pretty busy and he's been wanting company for some of the milkings. I think he said there was 50 milkings left. So I've had to help with some of the milkings. I'm more company than help. But one of the things we talked about was all the crazy stuff cows get into. My dad claims a dairy farmer could write a book about their crazy antics and no one would believe it except for another dairy farmer. I'd think he was exaggerating except I was there for some of the stuff that has happened here.

One of the earliest things I remember was the cow who got her head stuck in the truck's wheel. My family had gone to our timber, the hollow,  for a bonfire and we went to explore some caves. One of our pastures is in the hollow and we had a small herd of heifers there that day. When we came back we saw the herd around our truck and one of them was making a lot of noise. And then we saw that her head was stuck in the wheel well. My mom took my older sister and me away so we couldn't watch but it sounded pretty ugly. Thankfully my dad was able to get the heifer's head out without harming either the truck or the cow.

Cows aren't the only troublemakers in the barn. Cats can be as well. One place the barn cats love to hang out is on top of the pipeline over our heads. Usually they'll snooze up there and wait for milk to spill. One cat, however, would fall into a really deep sleep and when he did that he would sometimes fall off the pipe. One time he managed to land on my dad. I'm not sure who was more surprised my dad or the cat. 

And geese are even worse than cats! We found two domestic geese on the farm one day and since no one would claim them as ours we left them alone. One day my dad realized there was only one goose wandering around. He went about his chores and then discovered that the missing goose was stuck in the manure pit. While he was trying to figure out how to get it out the other goose fell in. He grabbed some rope, made a loop, and managed to snag a goose and pull it up and than repeated with the other goose. Both geese made it out unharmed and still as unfriendly as ever.

I've been fairly busy but I think my stitching fever is wearing down and I'll be feeling like playing some more WoW next week.

Happy Halloween!

It's Halloween tonight and since I'm not going to be dressing up and going anywhere so I thought I'd at least get one of my toons in a festive mood. Thankfully Lillium's pirate costume managed to get itself pulled together at the last moment.

Lillium's Pirate Outfit
I started this outfit with the red bandana. I love the bandana helms. They are a weakness of mine and I wish there were more of them. Cloth has a few other bandanas such as this almost pink-purple one and a white one but the red one really caught my eye and I decided to build a pirate outfit around it. The chestpiece was my next step. I didn't want to go with the expected loose shirt look and when I saw this chespiece I thought it was perfect. It looks like it's leather which would offer a little bit of protection when fighting and since it's tight it wouldn't get caught on anything. Than I could put the billowing shirt underneath for a layered look. But I quickly realized that I couldn't get the billowing sleeves because the bracers would cover them up. But thankfully they had a set of bracers that matched the design. If you're looking to just roleplay than you can toss the bracers off but when she's ready to fight not having trailing sleeves would work better. For the pants I was looking for red to tie back to the bandana and these where what I liked best and the belt had all the colors of this look in it. For the boots there was really only one choice for me. I loved the Buccaneer's Boots and there's nothing else that's quite like them. There's a few that share a similar look but aren't the black color and there are black boots with a different shape but I really wanted the black pirate boots. Lastly Lillium needed a weapon. Most of the time you think of pirates with swords and guns but since Lillium is a priest I wasn't able to use those. I thought of having her carry a torch but thought I'd look and see what staffs might look like a suitable club. Thankfully the Wrath zones provided a variety of practical looking sticks to beat people with.

I'm very happy with how this turned out and I'm going to have to think of switching my priest to heals to show this off. Hmm... a holy pirate, that sounds rather like a sober dwarf.

Achievement Hunting

Tiller Black Goat

Yesterday I had quite a lot of free time so I did Tyledres' dailies and managed to get her tiller rep to exalted. And because I couldn't resist she got the goat mounts. But than I decided to take her around Pandaria and get all the rep she needed for the lorewalkers. And since I was just traveling around Pandaria I figured I'd get all the exploration achievements knocked out in one go.

The search took a bit of time. I wasn't always certain where I was going. I had found some different guides about the best route and I could get close to locations but I didn't always figure out what I was looking for right away. But the best part was turning in the quests. When you turned in the mailed items the npc would tell you a story. And he didn't just tell you the story he animated it too. I had reached max and still had three turn ins left but I finished them because it was such a blast to watch the show. Most of the stories took about two minutes maybe up to three. There's a five minute debuff when the story is being told but as soon as the gong rang it would be removed and you could turn in the next lorewalker item. I managed to snag quite a few pictures.

Creation of the Saurok

Trying to eliminate the Saurok

Origins of the Jinyu

Prophesy of the Sundering

The First Monks

Building the Wall

First Journey on the Turtle

Returns though the Mist

Telling of his Journey

Watching for the Turtle

Nomadic Tribe caught by the Sundering

Becoming the Yaungol

The Hozen

Red Cloud Disk Mount and the Lorewalker Tabard

Blog Azeroth Share Post - Rules of me

This week on Blog Azeroth the shared topic from Mataoka is:

The Rules of Me: What are your personal rules you wish others would know about you?

What would I like people to know about me? Hmm... well

 

1. I tend to be a quiet person. Even after six years I have yet to master the art of typing and playing at the same time. I can do it, but I'm not going to be fast. Part of this is that if it's someone who doesn't understand my weird, sarcastic, deranged sense of humor I could come across as mean, insensitive, or as something I don't intend. I tend to come across that way sometimes to people I do know but I can usually talk to them and explain what I was trying to do. Sarcasm doesn't come across very well in type but when I type quickly that is my first response so I have to double-check what I send to people I don't know as well.

2. Invite me along I'll likely say "yes" but if I say "no" please don't badger me. I love doing stuff with people usually. I'm not very good at inviting people along or saying what it is I want to do but if someone wants to run old raids, dungeons, heroics, etc. I'm game! I'll happily follow along wherever you want to go. But there are times when I say I don't want to. They are rare but I usually have a reason for doing so. I'm not blowing you off. Instead it's likely I have plans to do something with someone else soon, something planned in real life, or there's something I'm trying to achieve in game that I really don't want to put off. 

And...

3. I really don't like unsolicited advice about my toons. Maybe you do indeed know better but telling me I'm wrong and I need to do stuff this way will make me dig in my heels and be stubborn. Yes, I will spite myself to get my way. Instead approach me with the idea about considering something. For example instead of saying 2H frost is much better than DW for PvP ask instead if I've ever tried it and if I'd consider giving it a try. I'm more likely to consider the suggestion. I'll come around to your way of thinking much sooner.