Soloing UP for fun, and the mount ^_^

Well today I decided to head into Utgarde Pinnacle to solo farm the blue proto-drake mount. Nothing special is needed really, you just gotta kill the boss and hope the mount is amongst the loot. I got lucky with the new raptor mount that came with the revamped Zul'Gurub instance, so I decided to give this a try. Being level 85, soloing this heroic was easy.

And on my way to this place I decided to make a video of it, just for the fun of it. Hope you enjoy it. ^_^

^..^
|O,O|
|};;;{|
w=w=== Hoot hoot!

-- Owl

Ode to Lag

This is a poem I wrote on Facebook. I was doing a transmog run with my guild and we were also going for some achievements for the drake mount (The ICC raid mind you). In the middle of the instance, as we get to the "Good Newwwwwws Everyone!" I started to lag and kept getting disconnections right and left. I DC, log back in, DC, log back in, DC, log back in, run in place, try to cast spells, DC, log back in, log back in, log back in, actually get in, DC, log ba-DC.
In the end I was too burned out from logging in and being disconnected too much so I got off. I don't know what it is. Then after a while I decided to write this.
So... this poem goes out to every poor druid or other class who has ever had the misfortune to disconnect 20 times in a single raid night, and also to everyone who suffers from the infamous lag monster.

"Ode to Lag"

I hate lag, I hate lag,
Much more than teabag,
Such a pain to get DC,
More trouble for you and me,
Latency goes down and up,
Bouncing like the perky pup,
First it's home, and then world server,
Like a ping-pong game, could last forever,
When I run into a room or cast a spell,
I run in place, and loading screen hell,
Go into an instance, loot a gold or a tome,
Next thing I know I somehow hearthed home,
Flew way back out, but it's too late,
Rare mob got tagged for a double date.
I hate lag, I hate lag,
I need a hug, this is sad.

Patch 4.3 is here! My thoughts so far.

Okay, so, they weren't lying. The patch was released at full force, and somehow I kept having to fight against what I call the "Lag Monster" For the last two nights, Monday and Tuesday, I kept getting lag problems and disconnections, and it was worse Tuesday night. I can probably blame the networks for this one. I mean, a patch comes out, everyone hears about it, and every single player decides to play again, and this causes an overload.
Then again is could have been the addons. I've tried updating my own as often as I could, and yet while I played I still got DC'ed. I kept trying things until I turned them all off, or just called it a night. I hate having to do that, but I did anyway. Even Warcraft advises you to take things in moderation, and everyone is on a 4.3 high right now. So yeah, the server crashed for a few seconds each time. My advice, turn off addons, don't download anything else, and quit watching porn while you raid the new instance, please? Thank you very much ^_^

And now, to one note I found most interesting, as a Boomkin. I know I don't have to tell you that I use two specs when I play my druid - bear and moonkin. I didn't play the bear form yesterday because I was unfamiliar with the new instances and didn't want to go barging in unless I had a seasoned (or not) tank to lead the way. No way was I gonna lead the way into a dark pit not knowing if I was going the right way, you know? So yeah, I'm staying in my boom-chicken form, especially since she'd very highly geared and capable of getting through Firelands up to the last boss... I just haven't killed Ragnaros yet. :/ bummer, huh?

Anyway, yesterday afternoon, I went with some guildies, and they were okay with me not tanking this time around, and we got another tank, a bear tank ironically, and got through all three of the new dungeons easily, since we weer in top gear for raiding at the moment (not heroic raid gear mind you, but high enough so we didn't struggle). I think the most fun we had was the story line of the dungeons. Poking fun at certain characters we saw in them, laughing as a worgen and human player got turned into night elves for one - similar to the Escape From Durnhold Dungeon where you're given a human illusion (if you weren't one)  and are sent back in time to save Thrall. And other things as well. One quest giver, for some odd reason, would not stop moving, and I had to be on my mount and continuously move along with him to keep the quest window open and secide which item I wanted for my reward. Tedious nonetheless, but definitely hilarious. You know when that baker in Ironforge will stop walking when you want to buy some bread or sell something to her? Well this guy... just...would...not....STOP! I hope Blizzard knows about this, and if it is a bug, I hope they clear it up, but in the meanwhile, have fun chasing him down and /bonk him for me if you would!

Speaking of quest rewards, for us casters anyway, there are two new rings that are top of the line at the moment for non-raiders.  These are only available via quests at the moment and you get them in the dungeons, so yeah, dungeon quests. Get in a group via the dungeon finger, pick up any and all quests you can get, do them, and get your rewards! The first I'll mention is "Signet of the Twilight Prophet" - which is rewarded when you complete a quest called... "The Twilight Prophet". Hmm. How ironic. So if you're a spell caster and you happen to get this quest, you know you're about to get one of the top rings in the game.

The next ring is "Ring of the Loyal Companion" - which shall be rewarded to you from the quest "To Wyrmrest!"

Now these two quests, to wyrmrest and the twilight prophet are both in the third new instance, and in order to get to them, you'd have to get through the first one and then the second one in order... you know, for story line flavor. So in the instance "Hour of Twilight" (and no, we do not SPARKLE!), You're sent to present-day Dragonblight, and now not many undead scourge are out there. Since there is a jailor of the damned on the throne, let's assume all the zombies are either sleeping or playing canasta together. Either way, they're gone - but now the Twilight's hammer is among us, and they are gonna try and stop you and Thrall from reaching the temple. Amazingly, Thrall doesn't remember you from the Durnholde mission, but for him that was years ago, so oh well. Rather than catch up on good times, let's move on and get that Dragon Soul to the temple!

Now the quest "To Wyrmrest" is a given. You talk to Thrall and get the quest and you just have to complete the dungeon really - make sure he get's to wyrmrest temple alive! The other could be tricky. I managed to find a missive in the pockets of a member of the Twilight's hammer while running through the instance, and it started the quest "the twilight prophet". Turns out some leader in the area knows that Thrall is near and has sent orders to the others to stop him at any cost. So during your quest you make it to the temple and Archbishop Benedictus leads you inside and sets up a light barrier to keep the enemy at bay... actually he's the boss fight and he's just trapped you in there with him. He's the twilight prophet! So when you kill him, the quest is complete and you can turn in both quests to Thrall, who graciously stands still, much to my liking.

My thoughts are, if you can complete these dungeons, then you'd have the absolute best caster rings in the game. Best in slots anyway? How do I know this? From Mr Robot. It's a website you can go to and have your character's gear evaluated. It will know your spec and talents, and will advise you on how to optimize your gear. What enchants you need, what gems, etc. Even better, you can check and see what upgrades would suit your toon best!

So far, from what I can see, the only two rings you can get that would be an upgrade to the rings you get from these dungeon quests would be The Infernal Signet of the Avengers, and the Quicksilver Signet of the Avengers. Both of these "Avenger" rings are only available to people who are exaulted with the Avenger of Hyjal, and the only way to increase your reputation with them is to raid in the Firelands instance.

Let's do some math then...Now up until you hit honored, you can easily get rep from killing the small trash and large trash mobs. Small would be things like the pack of dogs and the scorpions I assume, aslo little spiders. Large trash mobs would be... well, like those giant walking fire behemoths things. Whan most people did was they'd rep-farm by killing as many mobs as they could without killing a boss, then go outside, reset the instance, and kill the mobs again and again. But at one point, the mobs stop giving you experience, so now you have to kill the bosses, and once dead, then you are saved to the instance, which resets every week on Tuesday. So four bosses in the instance give you 250 reputation for killing them, so that would be 1000 rep. Not bad, if you can manage it. That would be from killing Beth'tilac, Shannox, Alysrazor and Lord Rhyolith.

Then if you killed Baleroc, Majordomo Staghelm and Ragnaros then you could net yourself 400 rep points for killing them... 400 x 3 = 1200... so if you could clear the whole instance, that'd be 2200 reputation. And that's assuming you CAN kill all the bosses in one week. Once you've downed them the first time, it's easy on every next attempt.

If you've just hit honored, then the only way to increase you rep is to kill the bosses in the Firelands raid... 2200 rep, if you can kill them all on normal mode at that... hmm...Let's see... the points to level up Honored to Revered is 12,000... and to get from Revered to Exaulted, you'd need 21,000... so that's 33,000 reputation points you'd need!

If you were to clear the entire instance and get all 2,200 reputation points during the experience, and you start out at honored rep... then it would take you 15 weeks to get to exaulted! That's a good three, maybe four months worth of raiding.

If you're a serious raider, and you can get your reputation up to exaulted with the Avengers of Hyjal, then by all means get the top two best rings in the game at this time! But if you can't wait, get the quests done in the new dungeons. You won't regret it... only takes a few dungeons to do it, and it won't take three months to get it. ;-)

So in conclusion, I'd say the new dungeons are pretty nice, the loot is excellent, and I'm looking forward to the fair for once. Darkmoon Faire has been revamped, but instead of stopping outside of town like a roaming carnival, they have found a permanent spot to set up their tents and things. Not only that but it's bigger and better than ever. I guess they figured they can net in a bigger profit by cutting out the travel expenses and revamping their tents and what they have to offer. What I'm hoping for is that from now on, the Darkmoon Faire is going to continuously have new things with every future expansion that comes out, and that it's not just about the darkmoon cards that I;m talking about here!

See you at the Carnival!

--OWL

The Horse is With Me!

Happy Hallow's End! Today, on October 26th, Owl went into her daily attempt at killing the Headless Horseman. Actually, I'd hardly call it an attempt... I call it a mission.  You don't just attempt to kill this guy, you just kill him! He's almost too easy, but then he's one of the two oldest holiday bosses in the game. The other guy is that dark iron dwarf who wants to disrupt Brewfest.

So today I go in and kill him for the umpteenth time, and as I opened the bags (which is set to auto loot), I saw more of the same... The pumpkin helmet I can't carry any more of since I already have one, a broom, and then my eyes saw what I had been hoping for, the Headless Horseman's Reigns! This let me learn how to summon the demonic horse that the Headless Horseman rides, a black stallion with decorative riding equipment, all of it dark. Glowing lime green eyes and the lower legs and hooves glowing green with demonic energy, much like the demonic steeds the warlocks can summon with their spells. This mount is also similar to the Fiery Warhorse that drops in Kara, from the first boss known as Attumen the Huntsman, whose horse is named Midnight.

But the key effect that makes the HH mount unique is the fact that it can fly, so everyone wants to have a horse that can defy the law of gravity.

The only other mount that is horse-like and can fly would be Invincible, the undead winged steed that drops from the Lich King in Icecrown Citadel, when you defeat him in 25 player heroic mode. It used to be a guaranteed drop, but nowadays it's a low drop chance, so I don't think I'll ever get my hands on it.

In other news, I was in a raid, Firelands, and we had wiped on the bird boss, and at one point I was resurrecting players. I use an addon called "Speakinspell" and I have a few movie quotes from Young Frankenstein. One of which is, "It's Alive!" the other is "As my new <player>-zombie, I give you a name... it is... Blücher!" and then a custom emote "/e looks around as unseen horses whinny in fright." Or something to that effect.

At one point when the It's Alive message went off, a player quoted it in vent, and then I sung a verse from Puttin' on the Ritz. A short while later yet another player stated that she got the song stuck in her head. I have to admit the tune is pretty catchy.

Especially in this version. I found an mp3 online and made a music video. I hope you'll enjoy it! =)

Aqua form blues

Owlaf in seal form. I have an addon called Speakinspell that lets me add things like emotes or /s phrases to whenever I cast a spell... this is what she had to say when she went into aquatic form.

The Latest from Owl

Well, I've been kinda away from all this blogging stuff. My bad. But then maybe we all have times when the real world can overwhelm us with real life problems and challenges. I've been facing a lot of my own and it's pretty tough... particularly that wasp that decided to sting me one day on my way to work... now that pissed me off for about a minute or two. If I were a real druid I probably would have moonfire spammed it till it was dead, and then looked around and hoped nobody noticed. I mean druids are supposed to be caretakers of nature, right? Well, the real life wasp probably is still out there somewhere, but it's nuthin' compared to the wasps from the Zul Gurub instance in WoW. ;-)

Anyway, the wasp sting on my left hand... That's nothing to worry about... although it itches like hell. I need to stop scratching at it or it'll never get better.

I have however been busy leveling a second druid up to 85. I managed to get her to 84 in time to start doing the brewfest boss for the holiday event. It drops some of the better trinkets for the time being, especially if you just hit 85 and need to get out of those blues and greens, and the loot has a chance to drop a weapon as well, so you could get lucky. Also, for those mount fanatics like myself, the keg shaped loot box has a very rare chance of giving you one of two mounts, although I have heard of one player getting two mounts in one! One of the mounts is a ram that looks just like the ones you can ride on when you deliver kegs on the Alliance side of the realm, and the other is a kodo, like the ones the Tauren most often ride but seems to have a few kegs on the sides like saddlebags... Now that MUST be refreshing!

Way back before the dungeon finder, Owlaf had to form up a group of five people from her server. I almost miss the trade channels saying, "LFG Direbrew, need 1 heals!" and etc. Nowadays we have the Dungeon Finder ability. As a tank and sometimes a healer, it's an instant que, and for dps the wait time is around 4-6 minutes for the direbrew boss this year... plus you don't have to fly all the way out to Blackrock Mountain and fight your way through low-level mobs just to get to the Direbrew boss... I bet this is a big relief for the Horde side since they'd have to travel two or three times the distance from their own capital city. So yes, Blizzard has made this a whole lot easier. You can get the daily kill for Direbrew done a lot faster and have more time to run around and do your daily quests or farming.

But back before the dungeon finder, Owlaf won the loot roll for the swift brewfest ram. It was the first rare mount that she got from a dungeon.

Anyway, another year, and another Brewfest is gone... and Owlaf still hasn't gotten a remote that could take her to this dungeon whenever she wants. This means if I wanna go in and cause a ruckus, I'd have to wreak havoc on the rest of the instance... so Dark Iron Dwarves, put up signs in your tunnels that say "Beware of Bears!" RAWR!

Amazingly enough, she now has both festive mounts from this holiday, and my hunter has two remotes now... I wish I could give one to this main druid of mine. *sigh*

Video - WoW Shark Attack

I got in the mood to do this quest again, and I happened to have a druid I was leveling at the time. Once Kaynine got to the lower level 70's area, I took her to Dragonblight and started questing there. The Tuskar ask you to help them collect some lobsters from traps on the sea floor and you find one trap was destroyed. Turns out a very big, very hungry shark has returned to these waters. So you get some meat and stick it on a big hook, and then the big bad shark comes around and you get to kill it.

Well as I did this quest, I couldn't really get the theme from Jaws out of my head, so I found an MP3 for it, and edited the video to fit with it. I did recall at the start of the first Jaws movie during the opening credits they filmed the sea floor as though you were the shark swimming through kelp and such, searching for food. I tried to mimic that at one point, then went right on ahead to the quest itself.

And yeah, the fight itself kinda sucked because the shark's head seemed to go through the camera so you're seeing the inside of the shark... But then the shark always looks fake. ^_^

New Blog Background

Yarp. I take several screenshots when the thought strikes me. I've been meaning to do this for a while. I wanted to make the blog more unique, more like my own, so I decided to finally go ahead and make this image, which is a mixture of screenshots I selected.

Each image I used I clipped and changed the opacity from 100% to 75% so they're somewhat see-though, and then I used a tool on each and every one of these images to smear the edges. I turned off the visibility of each layer as I finished it, then I made them all visible again and saw this - the end result. It looks like I had clipped out screen shots and got the edges of the papers wet so they got warped. You can blame Deathwing if you want... I like it anyway.

SO! Starting from the top, there's Owl in boomkin form casting her Wrath spell while in the firelands with her phoenix hatchling in front of her... HEY! Get outta the way you little birdie! Going clokcwise from there, in the top center is Kaynine, a worgen druid of mine, dancing with two other moonkins. Amazingly in this screenshot alone, all three moonkins are different sizes. One had a vrykul artifact that makes you bigger, and the other had used a potion that makes you shrink (hey, it worked in Alice in Wonderland didn't it?). The smaller moonkin is casting hurricane, and you can see a lightning bolt off to the right... The next picture, top right corner is of Owl in her swift storm crow form with a Lil' Deathwing flying next to her.

Middle right we have Owl on her Cenarion War Hippogriff with the hatchling next to her. Below that in the lower right corner we have Owl in Blackwing Decent... cowering before the almighty Mister Pinchy.

Lower center is Owl in caster form, a rare sight indeed, in mostly troll gear with the voodoo doll pet to the left... And then next to that in the lower left hand corner is a screenshot I took a week or so ago as of this posting, and this has a story of it's own.

See, during Wrath of the Lich King, us alliance folks had to go befriend these hunters that lived and worked in the Grizzly Hills, a place that had pine trees and fair game. So while you do these tasks, well, you start to get suspicious, especially when someone claims to be allergic to Wolfsbane and asks you to destroy the plants that are growing around their compound. At one point you rescue an alliance official, a human who asks you, "Were you bitten? ANSWER ME! WERE YOU BITTEN!? You don't know do you..." Turns out the trappers you've been helping are really Worgen, werewolf type creatures that love hunting and killing, and they were trying to get you to join them. So you and the human grab a horse and gallop away only to see packs of feral worgen chasing you and trying to eat you, and maybe even skin you... YIKES! So you throw lamp oil and set them on fire and urge your horse through the dangerous woods... I know an easier way... just fly outta there... But no... have to ride the horse for the quest chain, oh well. Shrug your shoulders and get on with it.

Well after the Cataclysm, the Greymane wall that separated Gilneas from the rest of the nation was broken at last, and the Gilnean citizens that had been walled up in there have finally emerged with a dark and terrible... well it's no secret anymore... They're all cursed as Worgen, but thanks to an elixir, some of them managed to regain their human minds and were able to save themselves from the effects of the cataclysm and their battles against the Forsaken. When their city falls, however, they turn to the Alliance and are welcomed, even if they are cursed.

So several months later, I'm leveling a worgen druid (or harvest witch as they're sometimes called) and I decided to do this quest chain, and when this part came up, I activated the chat bubbles feature and took a screenshot so it looked like a comic.

The Alliance guy says, "Were you bitten?" And Kaynine says, "Umm... I dunno how to tell you this... But..."

So yeah... a Worgen saving a human who asks if she was bitten by a worgen yet? Hello! This character was bitten ages ago... Isn't it obvious! HAH!

But I digress. In the center left there are two photos, one of Owl flying (which I blurred to make it look nicer, seems to have worked), and the other isn't any character I have actually, but rather of a nice picture of a winterspring cub attacking one of it's own first prey - a rabbit. If you thought the monster guarding the cave in Monty Python's Holy Grail movie was bad... "Look at the bones! I'm warning you!!!"

In the very center are actually two photos, but one of which stands out very prominently. How often are you ever going to see a cat chewing bubblegum I wonder? Underneath this image is one of Owl sitting on her new raptor mount.

And then, the entire background image under all this stuff... it's a photo from Stormwind of me in cheetah form kiting two dozen paper zeppelins. :P

Hope you liked it, this is the new background for my blogsite until further notice or non-notice. Hope you enjoy it.

--Owl

Raptor Mount!!! YES!!!

Owlaf won the Armored Raptor Mount from a loot roll in Zul'Gurub!

It was a fairly casual experience... just four guildies from Insomniatic Tendencies and a healer we pugged. Back before Cataclysm, me and a friend of mine would form a raid together, just us two level 80's, and we went prowling past mobs and killing certain bosses in the hopes of getting a raptor or tiger mount.

Being alliance players, getting the raptor mount was a must because the Horde get raptors while the Alliance gets cats, depending on specific faction reputations that is... Trolls have raptors, so if an Orc or a Bloodelf or any other horde race wants a Raptor then they have to be exaulted with the Trolls of Darkspear. Likewise, any player that is not a Night Elf would have to raise their reputation to exaulted with the Night Elves in order to be able to ride on the panthers and tigers. So the tiger mount from the Zul'Gurub instance is as coveted to the Horde as the Raptor is for the Alliance. A definite rare for certain factions to be sure.

Anyway, the two of us would kill two bosses on a weekly basis... well, once we were exaulted with the Zandalar Tribe, which is now no longer possible to obtain. Before we were exaulted with this particular faction of trolls, we'd clear the whole instance and try our best to collect as many faction reputation items we could... But our bags were constantly being filled with junk. Once we hit exaulted, collecting these items was no longer as important - just two bosses were... for the mounts.

Nowadays, ever since the zone was revamped and transformed into a heroic instance, we had a new choice, to run through it like a regular dungeon with a full group, but with a new catch... since it was no longer a raid, we didn't have to wait a whole week (or less) for it to reset. In fact, with the "random Dungeon Finder" it was possible to do this heroic more than once a day! So with a really good group with nothing better to do, you could attempt to farm it 24/7.

But this day, it was just pure luck and the blessing of the random number generator, yes, our good friend the RNG.

After we killed the boss and sighed with relief in knowing we didn't have to wait for anyone to rez, I clicked on the corpse to loot it. For a moment, nobody did a thing... We were all thinking the same thing.

Two items? Why are there two items? Okay, one is this caster cape I think, yes that's it, so what's this... mouseover... O....M....G!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

That is probably what we were all thinking.
 Nobody even rolled for a long time... we were all waiting for the idiot sucker to roll greed so the rest of us could roll need. But being the party leader I put it in chat.

"WOW! Okay guys, we have a mount here. If you don't have it yet, roll need on it!!! Good luck!"

Okay, so they might not be my words exactly, not to mention spelled properly, but still, in our excitement, I only have time to type, "Roll NEED" and "YES!" So the chat really looked more like this:

player1- OMG!
me - Roll NEED!!!
player2- So we roll need?
me- YES!
player2- Okay

And then the rolls came... and I WON! I was ecstatic. It was like winning the lottery. A definite plus to the day.
The tiger mount did not drop, but that wasn't so disappointing.

But it makes me wonder how many people on our server got these ubber-rare mounts from Zul-Gurub... I don't count the bear from Zul'Aman because that is guaranteed to drop if you can beat the timer... so if anyone got the Raptor or Tiger mounts... =) Curious!

-PEACE!!

Bubble Gum

New Trading Card - Owlaf!

 

If Owlaf was a trading card for World of Warcraft, this is probably what it would look like. HA!

Salty Owlaf!

Owlaf has finally won the Kalu'ak Fishing Tournament!

...at long last!

"ELUNE BE PRAISED!"

I can remember one time I attempted this contest. I had invited a friend of mine and we were in a group together. At one point he said he got it, and I said, "YOU LIAR!"

Next thing I knew, Elder Clearwater announced that my friend Rasput had won the derby. I quit playing for a few days because I was so upset about it. I told Rasput about the contest and what to do to try to win, and in his first attempt, HE WON! I couldn't believe it.

Well, it's been several months since I've tried it. Even during these times, some people still head up to Northrend for this competition. I saw players in the capital city of Dalaran wearing overalls and fishing hats.

On this particular Saturday, July 30th, 2011... I flew out of Dalaran as a storm crow and soared across glaciers till I came to the coast of Howling Fjord. Once there I found two fishing pools next to each other, a stone's throw away from one another really, and I perched on a rock for half an hour. The contest starts at 2pm game time, which to me was 4pm.

Ten minutes before it was due to start, I double checked everything I had. I had the fishing hat from the fishing quests, I had some gloves that were enchanted with the +5 skill. I had the Tuskar fishing pole, plus a heat-treated fishing lure to attach to it. Then I realized I forgot the rum! I had plenty of it sitting there in the bank and I mistook it for something else. The rum is actually called "Captain Rumsey's Lager" and the lager is made by combining a Skin of Dwarven Stout and a Flagon of Mead.... No, but I wish I knew what it tasted like, all of them.

Time was of the essence. I hearth or risk using my kirin tor ring so close to the start of the contest, but there was a keep that belonged to the Alliance Vanguard nearby that I was friendly with... well okay, I'm actually exaulted. So I flew up the cliffs and bought some stout and mead, brewed the lager, then flew back down to my fishing spot.

In guild chat, just before the contest was set to begin, I asked for my friends to wish me luck, and one player decided to switch to his mage to help me. He teleported himself to Dalaran and stood by the Elder who started and ended the contest. Then the competition began, and I gave my party member guildie a message, saying that if I caught it, I'd say NOW and he could summon me to town.

First two fishing pools had none in them. All the while I kept my fingers crossed and prayed. Kidn of silly praying for success in a video game, in an alternate universe, but I guess that level of energy broke through somehow. I flew towards the third pool on my route, and my friend asked, "Now?" I said, "No not yet." landed, and cast a couple of times.

I only saw it for a second since I had the auto loot turned on. Basically that function lets you take all the loot in an instant so you can move on faster, whereas if it was off then the window would remain open and I'd have to click on the items in order to loot them. With auto loot on, the window opens for maybe a second before the loot is automatically placed in your bags (if you have room for it) and then the window closes. For five minutes of fishing maybe it was like that. Cast a line, click on the bobber when I got a bite, then recast as soon as auto loot was done, which was really a blink of an eye.

Naturally, I had about one second to glance at that part of the screen where the loot window appeared. I saw one fish, a mata ray as usual, as well as another with an icon I did not recognize, but the name was clearly seen. "Blacktip Shark".

I GASPED! I typed into chat, "NOW!"
"NOW!"
"OMG! NOW! I GOT IT!"
"NOW!"

Meanwhile a murloc got too close to me and started attacking me, and after a few bursts of moonfire it was dead, and by the time it was, I received the summons from my friend. I clicked as soon as the game deemed me to be out of combat and I appeared right before Elder Clearwater. I turned in the shark and grabbed the boots without delay.

And then... FWOOSH! I got two achievements. One was for winning a fishing contest, the other was for completing certain fishing achievements and getting a title to my name. Now Owlaf can be known as Salty Owlaf. I cheered, I laughed, I hugged my friend (virtually anyway) and we danced in Dalaran. Two players whispered me, one was trying to get the ring which was the other reward that I didn't care for, and the other player wanted to know where I fished and how many I caught. I must have caught 21 fish by the time the contest ended. 11 Mata Rays and 10 Pygmy Suckerfish. I can tell ya now, I was so ecstatic that I won.

Now I have the boots to add to my collection and to my tackle gear. It's taken me quite a while to come this far as far as fishing goes... Maybe next I'll go back to Northrend to fish for that sea turtle mount... ^_^

JOUST - Wow Version

This is a video I made of my shaman Raikey, whom I plan to level to 85 so she can heal dungeons when I'm not in the mood to tank or dps on my druid. It will bring my total of max level characters to 4, the first being my druid, the other two are a hunter and mage. Might level a death knight someday, I have one in the works at the moment, but I'm neglecting it for the time being.

But I digress! This video is that of a quest chain in Mount Hijal. My character was level 81 when I did this, and while I was I decided to load my video capture and record my gameplay. Then I edited it and used Muse's song "Supermassive Black Hole", which I hope they won't mind, I did this for fun after all.

The quest is based on the old 2D arcade game of Joust, and it took several tries in when I first started playing it months ago to get used to it. Maneuvering is very much different from actually flying. In this particular quest line, you have to press the #4 button to make the mount flap his wings, and to move in a different direction, you have to turn to face the direction you want to go in and flap to start moving that way. If anything, it's a more challenging way to fly. Take that and add to the fact you have to joust down flying opponents with fireballs and streams of lava all over the place.

I personally think they should have added a hard mode where there actually is an unbeatable pterrodax that chases you around and can one-shot you if you get hit buy it. Well, not kill you, but it would make you dismount and be ported back to the mounts so you can remount and try again. When you take off, you have a five second grace period before the winged monster comes after you! ^_^

The Holy Crusade - level 25 Guild... at last!

The Alliance Guild Mounts, complete with symbols on banners.

 LEVEL 25, YAY!

It feels like it took forever, but our guild finally reached level 25. I suppose now that our guild experience is capped we feel a little disappointed. I had to think about it for a moment, and reaching the highest guild level is probably the same as reaching the highest level as a character. Owlaf is level 85, and now that she can't earn more experience, the only thing left to do is grind. You run dungeons and you collect things, build up armor and weapons, make lots of gold... and friends. =)

The Perk Reward: Mass Rez

I guess you can say that the best reward from this experience is being able to mass rez. Mass Rez, short for Mass Resurrection, is an ability I first saw in Wrath of the Lich King, and it wasn't performed by a player, but rather by a non-playable character. The scene was the final battle on top of Icecrown Citadel, the frozen throne from which Arthas ruled from. Arthas was the Lich King, a dark human who had been tempted and twisted by evil forces to become the leader of the Scourge, which is comprised of undead minions who blindly serve their master: the Lich King. During the battle, the Lich King used unholy magic and, in a dishonorable and just plain evil manner, he killed every hero in the group, myself included. As our bodies lay there on the cold floor, the Lich King gloated and started to resurrect the heros to become his minions. We were able to overcome every challenge set before us, and he planned to use us for his own. We were very powerful indeed, and the Lich King planned to use us as his slaves to destroy Azeroth.

But we had an ace in the hole. Tirion broke free and used his blade to shatter Arthas' sword. When that was done, the souls trapped in the blade were freed, and one of them was Terenas Menethil II, who was Arthas' father. And it was Terenas who brought me and my allies back to life. While all the other souls held Arthas immobile, the rest of us were able to kill Arthas and end his reign. Bolvar donned the Helm of the Lich King, and became master of the scourge and is now holding it in check. Bolvar Foredragon is now known as the Jailor of the Damned, and he bid the adventurers to never return to the frozen throne and told Tirion that he must be forgotten.

Tirion returned home and had a statue of all this erected in Dalaran so all could remember the evil of Arthas and Bolvar's noble sacrifice... "must be forgotten" eh? I bet Bolvar did a facepalm when he heard about this statue!

Rasput to the left, myself, Owlaf, on the right.

Well, at any rate, the massive resurrection spell cast was probably the coolest thing ever, and to be cast while in combat. Dude. As a druid, I can only battlerez one person at a time, and now only once, every ten minutes and... only one can be used per fight. So if I rezed somebody in a ten man dungeon and another person dies, they're stayin' dead! >.<

Now the guild perk for Mass Rez is available. So let's say we all die, but I manage to avoid death by shadowmelding into the background. When the combat ends, I can come out of hiding and cast Mass Rez, thus bringing everyone back to life to nub it up all over again. This gives you a debuff, making it impossible to be mass rezzed again for another ten minutes, but I doubt that's necessary.

At the top of the mountain

Well, now that the guild has reached such a high level, some people think that maybe there's nothing else to do. I disagree. We can run raids and do dungeons. We can grind reputations and do daily quests. We can farm materials and create items. The game is still going. It never ends. At the moment, the highest guild level is 25. Once upon a time the highest level  players could reach was 60, and today it's 85. In the future, I imagine they'll come out with new challenges and new guild perks, new levels to gain to unlock them. Heck, they're coming out with a new magical staff that the guild could work on. Unfortunately it means a lot of teamwork and completing every single raid in the Cataclysm world... so I might not lay my hands on that particular weapon until it's out of date.

In the meantime, we have things to do. We reached the top of this mountain. I'd say in the real world, you reflect on your journey and think back on what you truly accomplished, and feel the satisfaction of what you have done.

In world of warcraft though, you can do so much more...

From the top of a mountain, a mage can slow fall from it, floating down safely. Priests can do that too with levitation. Engineers can jump off and use their parachute that they tinkered into their cloaks. Druids can jump off the mountain, turn into a storm crow, and just fly away. Everyone else can either fall to their demise only to resurrect themselves at a graveyard, or they can climb onto the backs of their favorite flying steed and soar. Gryphons, wyverns, hippogriffs, flying carpets, gyrocopters, nether rays, rockets, or dragons. You can decide.

I'd say the sky is the limit... but we reached Outlands too, which is another planet... Hmm... Maybe we ought to reach for the stars next. =)

-Owl

From Left to Right: Chantdust, Grampss, Owlaf, Borgin, Momia, Sweetaboo

Owlaf's Troll Gear

After many runs through the new Troll instances, Owlaf, my night elf Druid, had gotten hold of almost all the gear from those new instances. She's missing at least one item for the moonkin offspec, but my feral gear is pretty much complete. As you can see, it's all green, so for this armor set I've traved out my Precious' Ribbon for a green linen shirt to add to the green effect. I likes!

Behind me, to the left of the image, is my voodoo doll, a non-combat companion (pet) that I made through troll archaeology.

So far, Owlaf has the best gear she can get from heroics. Now it's only a matter of farming more points to buy the better gear, which at the moment isn't too much better, but still... what else to do? ^-^

Pre-Patch 4.2 Thoughts

Firstly I'd like to thank the folks who visit my pages. Glancing at the changes to the moonkin on the forums, I'm not sure how this will effect me and/or my rotation. Usually in a fight like in Baradin Hold during the fire phase I'll be strafing around the room spamming moonfire since, as you move, you have a buff that reduces mana cost and increases damage of moonfire. It's an awesome tool, at least I think, so this new thing they're implementing in the upcoming patch might be interesting or challenging or both...

I'll include the Druid patch notes here, but not much else...

From Blizzard:

Druids

    Druids now gain 1 attack power per point of Strength, down from 2. They continue to gain 2 attack power per point of Agility while in Cat Form or Bear Form.
    Entangling Roots and the equivalent spell triggered by Nature's Grasp no longer deal damage.
    Ferocious Bite damage has been increased by 15%. In addition, its base cost has been reduced to 25 energy and it can use up to 25 energy, for up to a 100% damage increase.
    Innervate now grants an ally target 5% of his or her maximum mana over 10 seconds, but still grants 20% of the druid's maximum mana over 10 seconds when self-cast.
    Mangle (Cat) damage at level 80 and above has been increased to 530% weapon damage, up from 460%.
    Omen of Clarity clearcasting buff from now lasts 15 seconds, up from 8 seconds.
    Ravage damage at level 80 and above has been increased to 975% weapon damage, up from 850%.
    Shred damage at level 80 and above has been increased to 520% weapon damage, up from 450%.
    Swipe (Cat) now deals 600% weapon damage at level 80 or higher, down from 670%.
    Talent Specializations
   
        Balance
       
            Earth and Moon's duration has been increased to 15 seconds, up from 12.
            Fungal Growth spell visual effect has been updated to be less visually intrusive and more aesthetic.
            Lunar Shower has been redesigned. When casting Moonfire, the druid gains Lunar Shower. Lunar Shower increases the direct damage done by Moonfire by 15/30/45%, and reduces the mana cost by 10/20/30%. This effect stacks up to 3 times and lasts 3 seconds. While under the effects of Lunar Shower, Moonfire generates 8 Solar Energy, and Sunfire generates 8 Lunar Energy. The amount of Lunar/Solar Energy gained does not change based on the number of points spent in the talent, or stacks of Lunar Shower. Those druids who wish to delay transition in or out of an Eclipse state should now cast the one of their two basic attacks which will not move the Eclipse bar (either Starfire or Wrath).
            Solar Beam has a new spell effect.
            Wild Mushroom: Detonate can now also trigger Earth and Moon, in addition to Starfire and Wrath.
       
       
        Restoration
       
            Symbiosis (Mastery) has been removed and replaced with Harmony. Harmony increases direct healing by an additional 10%, and casting direct healing spells grants an additional 10% bonus to periodic healing for 10 seconds. Each point of mastery increases each bonus by an additional 1.25%. Healing Touch, Nourish, Swiftmend, and the initial heal from Regrowth are considered direct healing spells for the purposes of this Mastery. All other healing from druid spells is considered periodic.
       
       Glyphs
   
        Glyph of Berserk duration increase is now 10 seconds, up from 5.
        Glyph of Ferocious Bite has been redesigned. It now causes Ferocious Bite to heal the caster for 1% of maximum health for each 10 energy used.
        Glyph of Innervate now causes the druid to gain 10% of his or her maximum mana over 10 seconds when Innervate is used on a friendly target, in addition to Innervate's base effect.

• • • Back to Owl • • •

Well, I'm wondering how the Solar Beam will look, especially since I got a new graphics card and can play the game on ultra visual settings without lag or disconnect issues (or so far I've noticed). Definitely worth the investment, I'll consider it my own birthday present to myself. ;-)

I think I like the idea of entangling roots no longer doing damage. It wasn't like it was doing any in the first place, but often times if you did deal damage to the snared target it would break, which was annoying when I was leveling back in the day, although leveling it was almost pointless unless I used nature's grasp so it would snare on the attacker and hold them still while I got away in cheetah form.

But now it seems that it will work much better as a crowd control mechanic in groups. No damage means it won't be breaking prematurely. I can only imagine how polymorph would work for mages that are leveling. Imagine you come across a chest you can open and there's one humanoid near it. You sheep it and then you go and loot the chest and run away? Might work. I'll probably test that theory sometime and if I remember I'll post about it.

As far as crowd control goes in groups, I can't tell you the number of times I've cast entangling roots only to see my target turn into a sheep and then a toad. Sure enough, the mage and the shaman in my group targeted the same thing. If I got a gold for every time that happened, HA! Well, when patch 4.2 comes out, hopefully it won't cause anymore bad pulls. Imagine sheeping a target and the tank had just gone afk and you didn't know it. As a mage you'd be squished... unless you're a night elf mage then you might remember to shadowmeld. Same story for a night elf druid like myself. As Owl if I were to root a target and nobody else was there to save me, I'd shadowmeld and let the mob reset itself.

With this change, there could be fewer tears when in a pug that is new to crowd control. Something I'm looking forward to. Imagine in Grim Batol for instance. As a bear tank I could hibernate one target, root another, buff myself with thorns, go to bear form and start attacking. Sounds like a lot, maybe so, but if I was the only one with CC abilities, I'd try to use it if the group needed it.

--OWL

Reigns of the Raven Lord, at last!

Owl has finally gotten it! The Reigns of the Raven Lord. This mount functions just like a raptor mount, and it cannot fly, but I have been waiting for this one for a very long time.

The lore behind this mount is probably what makes it unique in all of wow, at least to me. The quest chain in question was available only to druids and it involved their long quest to obtain their swift flight form. Now though the quest has been removed and the skill is taught to players at the appropriate level.

But I had gone through the quest line myself. I still have the moonstone. Basically it started out with me going to Zangarmarsh, which is a blue swamp that had giant mushrooms for trees. Originally the Druids of the Talon were given the task of teaching druids the mastery of flight (turning into a stormcrow so they can fly), but now not many druids from the Talon remain. There is one though, and he accepted me as his apprentice. But the relic that was used to teach this form was entrusted to another for safekeeping, and this person's body slept while his spirit walks in the Emerald Dream. So I had to gather ingredients to make a potion...

Then I traveled to Moonglade, back on Azeroth on the continent of Kalimdor, and once I found the druid in question I gave him the potion, and he stirred from his rest. In his spirit form he gathered the relics I needed while I defended him from the nightmares that lurked in the Emerald Dream, including a large raven that seemed intent on dominating the dream. Retrieving the relics, the guardians of the dream return to the defensive battle that seems to be waging inside the Dream, and I return to Outlands and report to my master of this turn of events.


At this point we decide to try and help the Cenarion Circle by seeing if there is a connectiong between this mysterious Raven and the problems in the Emerald Dream. So I head off to the Bladesedge Mountains, where the Cenarion Circle has been hearing rumors of a bird-like people called the Arrakoa, and that one of their tribes in the mountains worships a raven... So off I went.

Once there a druid gave me a spell to disguise myself and speak to one of the Arrakoa spirits, which mistakes me for one of his own. I ask him about the book of the raven, and he told me, "The true believers have lived in shame since the day our treacherous cousins in Skettis stole the book from us, shattered its tablet, and buried the fragments in their wretched city! Pray that the raven will choose you to restore it, my son. Be faithful and remember always the prophecy, "From the dreams of his enemies shall the raven spring forth into the world.""

Returning to the druid, we decide to find this book before the Arrakoa does, so I head into the green lands of Nagrand and speak to yet another soul there in the hopes of harnessing avian sight. We capture a sparrowhawk and cast a spell over it, and then tell it to fly over to Skettis and wait for my signal. Then the bird flies away, and I head out to do my part. Once I reach Skettis, I whistle, and the sparrowhawk finds the prices of the book for me. Once I found them all I returned to Arthorn Windsong in the Bladesedge mountains, and the story unfolds:

"This is it! This is really it -- the Book of the Raven! It's all here... how the raven's followers captured and subdued the spirits of rivals, trapping them forever within stone statues! The tablet even mentions the raven god's name -- Anzu. I'd thought it was lost to history! There's something else here, too. After a description of a bloody battle and the downfall of the raven, there's a prophecy. Anzu will haunt the dreams of his enemies, twisting them to affect a return to this world... 

"The tablet has the confirmation we need, just as I thought. Now, we have to use this information to draw out and defeat this Anzu before he can do any more damage to the Emerald Dream! Since the sparrowhawks have proven such a success in hunting down the raven stones, Watcher Elaira has trained another one to relay my voice at great distance. He can help us communicate as you investigate the bird spirits revealed in the tablet!"

 So now, since the Raven's rivals have been trapped in stone, I have to go free them. Each statue was guarded though, so I had to fight for each of them; the Hawk, the Eagle, and the Falcon. Once I get their essences, I take them to my master of the Talon and tell him of what I had discovered. Now I have to find a way to contain all of them together so I can use them to summon Anzu and destroy him. The answer is a moonstone. I head off to Azshara and obtain a very rare moonstone, yet just as I'm about to grab it, a little goblin comes along who steals it and heads down the southfury river! Furious as can be, I chase after her and in the end she gives up as long as I don't hurt her. I wish I could have kicked her though...


At last I return and the moonstone absorbs the essences of the Hawk, Eagle, and Falcon, becoming an [Essence-Infused Moonstone], which I could now use to summon the raven lord and defeat him.


For that, I had to be able to access the Sethikk Halls on heroic difficulty, then I had to clear the location of all that were in it. Once I was ready, I placed the moonstone on the raven's claw (a kind of stand that was shaped so it would hold the moonstone), and Anzu appeared. Once I defeated him, I returned the my master, and had thus proven myself worthy to be one of the Druids of the Talon. I was given the swift-flight form shapeshifting ability, and I took to the skies like never before as a violet stormcrow.


I completed this quest chain back in November of 2009. After you've completed the quest you can talk to the Druid of the Talon again, and under concern that the Arrakoa might try to bring Anzu back again, he gives you the Essence-Infused Moonstone to keep forever, that way you can go back and kill him again.


That moonstone was the druid's key to unlocking this optional boss in the Sethekk Halls heroic instance in the Outlands. Druids could solo-farm this boss at level 80, and I tried doing that myself when I had the time and remembered to go attempt it. As Wrath of the Lich King progressed I got better gear and stood better chances at killing Anzu quicker.


Now with Cataclysm released, I can kill Anzu much faster. It's been a year and a half since I completed the quest to gain this key so I could farm the mount day after day. There were times when I'd become discouraged and would stop farming him for a while, and then I'd see another player riding on one in the city and start farming again. Off and on, I headed into the dungeon to try for the mount, without success.


Finally, this morning after I had won three pieces of leather armor in the heroic Zul'Aman instance, I prepared to head back to the Outlands. My friend Hammy asked what I was up too and offered to come along. I invited him to group and finished flying out there, and just outside the instance I used the guild perk which allowed me to summon him to me. It was worth the cooldown. We blaze through the instance, two level 85 players, blasting everything that stood in our way, not looting a thing. We get to Anzu and kill him before he could banish himself a second time...


And that was when the reigns of the raven lord dropped. Hammy passed, I rolled NEED. At long last, after a year and a half of attempts, I got him. It had taken so long that I lost count of how many times I had gone into that place to try and get this mount.


Now I have no other reason to go back to the Outlands again. Maybe for a reputation grind, but no... I have what I've been searching for at last. My face was tingly, I was so ecstatic!


Of course, everybody can farm it since Blizzard had removed the quest chain and made it so druids didn't have to be there to summon the raven lord to fight him, but I still have my moonstone. No way am I going to delete it. =)

Children's Week!

Well, they revamped the Azeroth versions of Children's Week in World of Warcraft. The Outlands and Northrend versions of the quests have not changed. In Kalimdor for the Horde, they have taken over the zone of Azshara and the goblins built a sort of track that lets people go from one place to another in rockets. The Horde orphan quest involves taking your orphan for a ride in a rocket. He of course pushes all the buttons and makes the rocket go off the track, spinning wildly, and the last button he pushes ejected him from the vehicle. James Bond like, no?

The Alliance equivalent is riding in a chopper (motorcycle with a sidecar, which the orphan sits in). Unlike the orc orphan, the human orphan sits in the sidecar and doesn't hit any buttons. Since he's such a good boy, I have the vehicle wobble from side to side for fun, and the I jump over some of the cracks in the ground with it. A little mischievous, we go down into a chasm and he gets a slime creature on his head, but we knock it off with a whirlwind, which carries us way up into the air. Good thing we got seat belts. If it was the ejector seat, I'd have a parachute.

I had started doing the quests on my laptop, but then I thought about making a video of it and the horde version to see what they were like and post it online, so I did. Unfortunately the music I chose was copyright protected somehow, so I had to chose another track that the website had. After narrowing down the search results to match the video length, I settled on Sinclair C5.

"Go for a ride, in my Sinclair C5."

Seems to fit. So go grab and orphan and take him out on a ride, whether its a chopper or a rocket, you'll love it. Children's week lasts, well, a week, so it ends at 11:59pm this Saturday, May 7th, this year. If you take orphans out to see things and play and such, they give you rewards. See if you can get them all.

Children's Week in World of Warcraft is based on the Japanese holiday Children's Day. From Wikipedia:

Children's Day (こどもの日 Kodomo no hi^?) is a Japanese national holiday which takes place annually on May 5, the fifth day of the fifth month, and is part of the Golden Week. It is a day set aside to respect children's personalities and to celebrate their happiness. It was designated a national holiday by the Japanese government in 1948.

 

Koinobori : The black carp (Magoi) at the top represents the father, the red carp (Higoi) represents the mother, and the last carp represents the son, with an additional carp added for each subsequent son with color and position denoting their relative age.)

Oh yes. I love that. =)

-Owl

4.1 Call To Arms... not worth it

This morning I woke up earlier than usual and I found that I had enough time for a heroic, maybe even the new troll dungeons since they take us so long to complete. So I get into the cue as a dps, hoping to sit back and blast trolls into oblivion. I get up and go make coffee. As the time goes by, the time I spend in the cue is compare to the time it takes to get into a group. For example at one point it said I had been waiting for 6 minutes and time till group was 9 minutes... When 9 minutes came along it told me average time was 12 minutes. When 18 minutes had passed and 21 minutes till cue came up, the call to arms was issued. (I had been checking periodically to see when this would pop)

So at this point, I figured nobody in the world is awake yet and willing to tank, at least all the tankable tanks that is, so I change my armor, activate my offspec for feral tanking, exit the cue and re-cued as a tank/dps. Sure enough I got the dungeon, and the call to arms is available to me. If I completed the entire dungeon, then I'd get a special satchel that contains gold and possibly other rare items, especially the mounts I was looking forward to. Imagine getting Baron Rivendare's Deathcharger, the swift white hawkstrider, the raven lord mount. The possibilities of that are wonderful.

So naturally I cross my fingers and hope to god that the pugs I go with are not all newbs. I ended up in Zul'Aman, the instance in the northern parts of the Eastern Kingdoms. This used to be a raid in the Burning Crusade era and there was a timer to save folks who were about to become sacrificed. We couldn't beat it, but we did manage to clear the instance. To my surprise, we kept wiping on the trash mobs, but the bosses we KO'ed at one shot each. It seems to me that the issue was crowd control: the trash mob trolls tended to hurt us hard, and we had to come up with a way to manage them and keep then from overwhelming us. If a mob of three hits me, then I'll lose a lot of health, as will other players, and the healer runs out of mana and we wipe. If we froze an enemy via frost trap thanks to that hunter we had, and scared another one so he was stuck in place with fear, then only one monster came up and we could kill it without the group suffering too much damage, then the healer wouldn't panic and run out of mana or anything.

After about two hours, at the last two bosses I dropped the seafood feasts (the epic ones) we cleared it all. We didn't save anyone of course, but with the patch just come out and everyone learning and getting used to the fights I figured it was okay. Maybe next time, when I have more gear and everyone knows what to do, to really blaze through the instance like lawnmowers set to sizzle. FA-WHOOSH! That kind...

So in the long run, literally, I got a caster 1H mace, gloves that I don't really need because mine are better and have a set bonus, and a maelstrom crystal that nobody needed. I'm going to try and save those up for my enchanting alt so I can make the epic weapon enchants.

At the end of the instance, an excellent dungeon run where nobody died on the boss fights and we had occasional oops wipes on trash, I got the satchel of spoils.

It only had gold inside of it. No high level potions or scrolls, no epic pets or mounts, not even a fortune card. Just gold. After all that work of coordinating with 4 strangers, one of which was from my server and recognized me from the city, and after all this... all I got was extra gold...

The only good thing I got out of my first ever Call to Arms as a tank was free gold to cover my repair bill. Good job Blizzard. Excellent. You really look out for us tanks and healers so DPSers can pug an instance quicker. Nice! Lovely! Peachy... dandy... cool.... great.

•AU• - Professor Owl - Topic: Tyrande's Favorite Doll, and Patch 4.1

About a week ago Owl got a night elf rare to proc on her archaeology projects, bringing her rare finds to 20 once it was completed. I only finished it a few days ago, which was after patch 4.1 was released, and it turns out that this object is an epic trinket. http://www.wowpedia.org/Tyrande's_Favorite_Doll has the full information, and based on what I can tell, this is more of a healing spec epic trinket rather than a dps caster trinket. The reason being is that while it does have intellect, it doesn't provide a solid dps gain whether on use or proc. What it does do however is that for each spellcast, the item store a portion of the mana, and when it accumulates enough of it, you can use it to cast an aoe effect that deals damage to anything near you. I think I'll be keeping my witching hourglass. It took provides intellect, not as much as the doll, but the hourglass also gives a little buff once in a while, increasing haste during spellcasting, something the doll doesn't do.

So yeah, the doll is going into the bank for the time being. As for my other trinket, it's the darkmoon faire card Volcano, and that is one item I am so not giving up anytime soon! =) Thanks go out to my friend Hammy for spending time making the cards to come up with the deck that would give the trinket as the reward.

Now that patch 4.1 has come out, Owl has had a chance to taste the two new heroic dungeons and roll on some major items. She also noticed some additions to archaeology which might make it more interesting and worthwhile to do. For one thing she already has the two raptors from the fossil book on archy, and the troll sword is very unlikely to drop anytime soon even with my skill at maximum. I wish you could buy a monocle and a glove enchant that would increase your skill by 15 and 10 points respectively, that way I can switch out my epic helm and gloves with the monocle and some low level item with the enchant when I go digging. Folks who use this are more likely to come across rares than without them. Idea for you Blizzard if you ever read this. Call the monocle "Owl's eye" if you want to refer it to me though, for crediting purposes. Either that or free WoW playtime, but all this is negotiable. At any rate, archaeology is hard when you want to find a dwarven or tol'vir rare artifact and all you ever find are fossils and troll entrails. Not very fun after a while, you know.

So, with the new patch out, they came up with a couple of goodies, not just what can be dug up of course! Firstly, they made it to where the frequency of dig sites depends on the rares you've found. For instance, I've already found all the Nerubian rares, and now they have a new rare item for the Vrykul. In northrend, I'm bound to come across much fewer Nerubian dig sites, and more of the Vrykul, but also probably some troll dig sites. I've found all the night elven rares, so those sites in Dragonblight might not appear at all, but even if they do it'll be rare... not as frequent as the Vrykul digs.

The second good thing about this patch is they finally came up with some new rares to find! I know, I know, I say "finally" as if it's been years between patches 4.0.3 and 4.1, but that's only because my total of artifacts found when 4.1 came out was 19. Now it's at 21, and there are a total of 33 rares to find.

Yep. They added 6 new items, most of which are fossils and troll. The Vrykul have one item that I'm kind of itching to get since the websites don't have too much information. I'm betting it's something you can use that you drink out of and it makes you either tipsy or smashed... hic!

The fossils are also interesting. Seems there is new pet in there, a pterrodax, which in WoW is like a pterodactyl, or exactly like one... I dunno, I never saw one in real life, I couldn't tell ya if Blizzard have then right down pat or are making it up. All we really have to go with are fossils... hmm. Anyway, judging by the image in the tooltip, I'm betting that this hatchling, for hatchling is what they are calling it, is not merely bones like the fossilized raptor mount/pet. I have a feeling that we'll find an actual egg shell fragment encased in amber with some DNA in it... similar to the Ancient Amber, which could very well be fragments of amber that you put together... somehow... %/ Probably the only notable thing to be found in the Fossil category will the the shield, which is probably going to look just like the turtle shell shield that dropped (or drops) from the turtle in Wailing Caverns, only with epic stats. Yep, a level 85 ilevel 359 epic shield, which will be useless to me as a tank since bears don't use shields.

So the three fossils (pet, amber, and turtle shell shield) are new, and then the Vrykul's drinking horn makes 4 new rares... the last two are troll. Yep, you read me, TROLL.

Now before patch 4.1, I used to think to myself, Man. With all these troll dig sites all over Azeroth, you'd think I'd have gotten a rare item by now. I'm getting sick to the teeth of all this bloodscalp dinnerware... I have enough of those to sell to Martha Stewart! Yeah, angry much? I hated Troll digsites because of the rarity of the epic sword that could proc as the next troll project, and the worse aspect before was even if I did get it, I'd still get a lot of troll dig sites. It was getting pretty depressing. I went to Outlands and Northrend to try and evade the trolls, but it turns out there are troll dig sites in Northrend too. ARGH!

Well now, they gave me two new reasons to get back into those Troll digs... and I already found one of them amazingly enough. I wish it was the pet, which seems to be a voodoo doll that has a big of mojo still in it. Can't wait till I get that one for my pet collection, which is getting closer and closer to the 125 achievement.

The other item I can comment about because I found it. It took 100 fragments to complete and 3 keystones (troll tablets), which narrows it down almost by 1/4 of the needed fragments. I mean 36 from the keys, the rest you have to farm, and this morning, with 4 digsites all in stranglethorn vale, I don't have to tell you that it took me forever. It was super easy and lucky for me I guess. Once it was completed I found that it has a 30 minute cooldown, which is not too different from a hearthstone without a guild perk.

The item in question? Haunted War Drum. I don't know how long it lasts, but once you set the drum down on the ground, you can click on it to use it, and it plays music like that you would hear when you go to any troll ruins or instances.

.... My god... Blizzard is brainwashing me with their Voodoo!!! *runs and hides!*

Yeah, basically jungle type sounds that made me think of Tomb Raider and drums beating that makes me think of Trolls flippin' out. Yeah, mon. It be good jibe rit ere i tell ya mon. Haha!

Well anyway, now my entire tray of archaeology projects are filled with grays. To escape the trolls for a while (since I'll be killing trolls and running through their ruins all the time getting epics from their freshly slaughtered corpses), I've decided to fly around Kalimdor for a while, dig up my remaining Night elven dig sites and see if more Tol'vir dig sites pop up for me. Since I've found the last Night Elven rare from Archaeology, I'm bound to find mostly fossil and Tol'vir stuff, with a couple of troll and at least one dwarven dig site along the way.

So yeah, Owlaf now has 21 rares completed in archaeology. "This should be in a museum!" *throws preserved lizard foot on the floor of a troll temple* "HONEST!!!"

•AU• - Puzzle Box of Yogg-Saron

http://www.wowpedia.org/Puzzle_Box_of_Yogg-Saron

Well, Owlaf finally got it! The Puzzle Box of Yogg-Saron! This was completed with 140 fragments of nerubian Archaeology. I got curious as to why they would have such an artifact from this culture, being as the creatures are spidery and native to Northrend, so I did some research. This is what I found on Wowpedia:

Early history

At the ancient continent Kalimdor's center was a mysterious lake of incandescent energies, the Well of Eternity. It was the true heart of the world's magic and natural power. From this magical ether the silithid were born. As the fallen Old God C'Thun recognized their appearance, he attempted to sunder the world that it once held in its unmerciful grasp. The Old God created avatars from the silithid in its own image. These avatars were to be known as the qiraji.
The aqir ruled the lands of the far west. These clever insectoids were greatly expansionistic and incredibly evil. The aqir were obsessed with eradicating all non-Arthropod life from the fields of Kalimdor. So the two big troll empires of Gurubashi and Amani found their common enemy in the third empire — the nation^[2] of Azj'Aqir.
The trolls fought them for many thousands of years, but never succeeded in winning a true victory over the Aqir. Eventually, due to the troll's persistence, Azj'Aqir split in half as its citizens fled to separate colonies in the far northern and southern regions of the continent.
Two aqir city-states emerged — Azjol-Nerub in the northern wastes and Ahn'Qiraj in the southern desert. So the new empire of Azjol-Nerub that stretched like a great web beneath the desolate glaciers of the land later known as Northrend was founded.^[3]

War of the Spider

Thousands of years later when the Lich King extended his influence over Northrend, the shadowy empire stood against his power. The ancient subterranean kingdom of Azjol-Nerub sent their elite warrior-guard to attack Icecrown and end the Lich King's mad bid for dominance. Much to his frustration, Ner'zhul found that the evil nerubians were immune not only to the undead plague, but to his telepathic domination as well.
The nerubian spiderlords commanded vast forces, and had an underground network that stretched nearly half the breadth of Northrend. Their hit-and-run tactics on the Lich King's strongholds stymied his efforts to root them out time after time. Ultimately, Ner'zhul's war against the nerubians was won by attrition. With the aid of the sinister dreadlords and innumerable undead warriors, the Lich King invaded Azjol-Nerub and brought its subterranean temples crashing down upon the spider lords' heads. The nerubian empire had now fallen for a second time.^[4]
Though the nerubians were immune to his plague, Ner'zhul's growing necromantic powers allowed him to raise the spider-warriors' corpses and bend them to his will. As a testament to their tenacity and fearlessness, Ner'zhul adopted the nerubians' distinctive architectural style for his own fortresses and structures. Though there are few pockets of nerubian warriors left, they still seek to gain vengeance upon Ner’zhul and reclaim their subterranean kingdom.^[5]

Recent history

Now, the nerubians are a depleted and embittered people. Most live in Northrend and shun all contact with outsiders — indeed, they attack intruders on sight, viewing all creatures not of their kind with suspicion. Understandably, they possess a vitriolic hatred of undead, especially crypt fiends and crypt lords. They realize that they are too weak to overthrow the Lich King, and must content themselves with their pathetic guerrilla war.^[6]
Mael Shelub, a living nerubian necromancer traveled south and worked with (but hated) the Forsaken Blarus Whitrick to defeat the Scourge in Silverpine Forest.<sup>[7]

 • • • •

So, yesterday Owlaf managed to get the puzzle box completed. It has a use with a one minute cooldown, and each time you use it, nothing happens until after about five or ten seconds, when the puzzle box will whisper to the player that used it. Creepy!!!</sup>

•AU• - The Last Relic of Argus

(Just so you know, the •AU• in the blog entry title is short for Archaeology Update, and the name of the item I found will be displayed in the title as well. Future entries I'll make based on the items in particular as I find them or when the mood strikes me.)

Owlaf has maxed out her skill as an archaeologist, so she has the chance of getting a rare artifact at any time. Last night she managed to get started on one from the Draenei. Finishing it this morning, I find that it is an object that behaves similar to a Hearthstone, only this will teleport you to a random place. This morning I used it, and I went from the Outlands to Stranglethorn Vale. I was overlooking a large whirlpool, and I found out that I was at the sundering that split northern and southern parts of Stranglethorn Vale! Worse yet I was in a tree, so the only way down was to jump down into the swirling watery vortex...

Good thing I can also go up as a druid in flight form ^_^

Now Owl has finally finished with the Outlands as far as archaeology goes. Northrend will be a similar story, only it also has a few Night Elven and Troll dig sites. The Outlands however only offered two races which are not found anywhere else, and those are the Orcs and the Draenei.

Unfortunately, the only major artifact I could find that belonged to the Orcs was a headdress, which is ideal for a shaman, although it is only good for a few levels.

Meanwhile the Draenei have two items. One lets you view a visual recording of the arrival of the Naaru, which are beings of pure light and energy that came to help the Draenei to fight off the Burning Legion. The visual is 3D, showing a Naruu appearing and three draenei rushing up to it and bowing, and then it disappears.

And Owl finally got the second item yesterday, which is a crystal that can teleport you to a random place, though it can only be used once every twelve hours. The interesting thing is it only teleports you to a random location in the Eastern Kingdoms or Kalimdor on the world of Azeroth. At least this means I won't have to worry too much if I find myself in the Outlands.

At any rate, there are 23 known locations, and I hope to journey to all of them, maybe.

Here is what information is known in the game:

• Unsolved -
"This is a simple draenei crystal that appears to be thousands of years old. You are fairly certain that it is not of this world."

• Solved -
"Before they lived on Azeroth or Draenor, the draenei, who still called themselves the eredar at the time, lived on Argus. When Sargeras took notice of Argus, Prophet Velen fled with some of his people, who became the draenei. The remaining eredar were absorbed into the Burning Legion. This simple crystal was taking from Argus when Velen fled. The inscription on the bottom reads, 'I long for Mac'Aree.'"

Curiously, I didn't know what Mac'Aree was, so I decided to look it up. Here is what I found about it:

Mac'Aree was the most sacred of the cities on Argus according to Jessera of Mac'Aree. It supposedly held walkways which were lined with precious minerals and rivers which glittered even in complete darkness. Jessera thinks that this might have been as long as ten thousand years ago, although it may have been as much as twenty-five thousand years ago, indicating that he has lived at least that long and still appears to be of prime age.
It is unclear what has since happened to Mac'Aree. It may depend on what has happened to the planet as a whole.

Sounds nice =)

Here's the site for information on the relic in question: http://www.wowpedia.org/The_Last_Relic_of_Argus

This brings Owlaf's total relics from Archaeology found to 18, out of 26 (if you find 20, you get an achievement called "It Belongs In A Museum!" and awards you with the title "Professor"... so someday soon, Owlaf Might just be "Professor Owlaf"!). The majority of the ones she doesn't have are from the Tol'vir in Uldum, and that i think is one of the hardest ones to get digsites of. Hopefully I'll get the epic staff from them or from the Dwarves. Till then I think I'll try to get another rare project done in Northrend. All I have left is to find the puzzle box of Yogg-Saron. Apparently it's a box you construct that when completed you try to open it, and every time you do, the old god whispers to you. (more on the old gods later). The website doesn't say what the cooldown is to try to open the box, so I wanna get it so I can find out. =D