WoW Journal - 27-February-2006

The advantage of having two characters of high level is the added flexibility. This weekend I did a wide range of activities, playing both Kyroc and Raslebol. Kyroc made level 58, but is already close to 59. And I have problems deciding whether to do Silithus or the Plaguelands on the final stretch to 60.

The most fun activities this weekend were the 5-man expeditions with the guild. One with Kyroc to Scholomance, one with Raslebol to Stratholme (living side). As long as you are with guild mates, and everybody understands that wipes happen, these places are the best. Challenging, interesting, and teaching you a lot on how to play your class. If you mess up, you usually wipe.

For Scholomance my guild first got together to kill Araj in the ruins of Andorhal, to get the key for several guild members, including Kyroc. Then we went into Scholo with a 5-man group, fighting our way to the viewing room. We didn't need to kill Rattlegore, as somebody already had the viewing room key from another expedition. So we killed Ras Frostwhisper with ease, then the Butcher for the Scholo quest series with a bit more difficulty, and then the undead Barov guy for the last deed of the Barov family fortune wiped us. The interesting thing was that although mobs had respawned in the first part of the dungeon, you can bypass them by jumping off the bridge in the first room, which helped with wipe recovery. We finally got the deed by having the fighter lead the undead Barov on a merry chase, while the other group members grabbed the deed. We then tried to fight our way backwards, from the room below the bridge to the room which leads to Janice and Rattlegore. But pulling from down there turned out to not work, the way the monsters are placed, if you pull from below you pull half the room and wipe quickly. So we went out, and decided to do the follow-up on the Barov family fortune instead. Turned out you can't do that one with just 5 people, as it is a PvP raid 62 elite quest. I'll try another day with a raid group, I'd really like to have the Barov trinket for summoning zombie servants, for fun.

The other great 5-man group was with Raslebol to Stratholme, living side. Interesting group, with 2 rogues and a warlock, doing heavy damage. We got 2 righteous orbs for me, I need 4 of them to tailor the Truefaith Vestments for Kyroc. I also won a Magister's Belt, a bind on equip item from the mage set, which I was able to sell for 40 gold in the auction house. We had a couple of wipes on the way, but managed to kill Balnazzar at the end without anyone dying. Then we tried to go for the cannon master, but wiped twice in short sequence, due to a group which was placed in a way that the rogues couldn't sneak there to sap. With our armors being damaged heavily by now, we decided to stop there.

I had just quit the group, repaired my equipment and cleaned up my inventory, when I heard somebody announcing a pickup raid to Strat living. Hey, I thought, I might get another righteous orb or two quickly in a raid. Bad idea. Why do pickup groups suck most of the time? This time the problem was the raid leader, an unusually obnoxious priest. First he refused to invite any other priests into the raid, because they would roll on "his" loot. We get to Stratholme with 10 people, and before we even enter, 2 people leave. We decide to try with 8 people, and the fighting goes smooth. We don't have a single wipe on the whole raid. But the priest is starting to get on my nerves. He whines constantly, complains about my pulls, even if I'm just killing an Eye of Naxxramas, which you need to kill fast because it summons gargoyles otherwise. And whenever there is a decision to be made, he is blackmailing the raid group with "if you don't do what I say, I leave the group, and I'm the only priest". Now I understand why he didn't want to invite another priest. When 7 of the 8 people want to try the cannon master, but the priest refuses, I have enough and just hearthstone out.

Saturday night I went on a spontaneous guild raid to Zul'Gurub. Unfortunately I hadn't looked at my watch when it was announced in guild chat, and then it took quite some time to get everybody ready. So by the time we killed the first boss, the snake, it was after midnight, and I would have liked to go to bed, being tired. But there were only 3 priests in the raid, the others still wanted to do the Bloodlord, and I couldn't leave. By the time I got into bed it was nearly 2 in the morning. Raids like that aren't compatible with my personal inner clock. I'm an early riser, even on weekends I rarely sleep longer than 8, but then of course by 10 pm I get tired, and by midnight I can hardly keep my eyes open. That is a bit of a problem, because other guild members often can only start raiding late in the evening, when their children are in bed.

Sunday night, while my guild went raiding Molten Core, I decided to do some farming for the recipe for the Greater Nature Protection potion. That recipe has a 1% drop chance from the nature elementals in the Weeping Cavern. The respawn rate is very fast, so you never run out of things to kill. Unfortunately each spawn point can either spawn the elemental you want, and they are easy to kill, or some slime monster. There are two kinds of elementals, and two kinds of slime, and the second kind of slime is really nasty to solo. During the fight, and on death, it splits up into many little oozelings, which together do quite a lot of damage, and are hard to target (TAB doesn't work on them). I can solo them with Raslebol, but they bring down my health to below half. Then fortunately some guild mates who hadn't gone to MC either turned up to help me. Especially the mage was helpful against the oozelings, with his area-of-effect spells. But we were extremely unlucky, will killed over a 100 elementals and the same number of slimes, and still couldn't find the recipe. I so hate low drop rates combined with bad luck. Well, we did get a couple of green items, and I even won a Traveller's backpack, but the recipe never dropped. Finally we just gave up.

But in general I had a lot of fun this weekend. Next Friday I'm signed up for Kyroc's first Molten Core raid. Starts at 8, hopefully people aren't too late. I just need to find out how healing is organized in large raids in my guild.
- posted by Tobold @ 8:32 AM Permanent Link