six-point-one thoughts on the state of my game

ONE: Five of my eight characters who are in Garrisons have gotten cameras so far. Only the two Alliance Mages have been vain enough to snap some test self-portraits.

It seems that these cameras will, in fact, be satisfactory for acquiring the sort of close-up pictures I want for my Characters page. I’m still waiting for one of the characters who has already gotten a camera to get the follow-up mission that will upgrade the camera to an account-wide Toy…

TWO: I hadn’t originally intended to upgrade the Storehouse to level 2 because the Mobile Banking guild perk is generally sufficient for my guild bank access needs. Nevertheless, some weeks ago, Kamalia upgraded her Storehouse on a whim. I was delighted to meet the guild banker!

Aww, Yorn got to bring his wife out to Draenor, like Murne Greenhoof at the Tannery brought his wife Suniya with him!

Or maybe Ranea is Yorn’s sister, and Suniya is Murne’s mother — whatever, they are still obviously family. Charmed, I decided that I’d upgrade the Storehouse to level 2 on all my characters so that Yorn wouldn’t have to be lonely. Then Patch 6.1 came, and Ranea disappeared, replaced by a soulless goblin golden piggybank. It would have been nice if they’d let Ranea become one of the building-associated extra NPCs who wanders about the Garrison — like Suniya who appears when you build the Tannery or Jozzle the Neat who appears when you build the Scribe’s Quarters — but I didn’t see her. I was so sad about Ranea’s disappearance that I busted my Storehouse back down to level 1.

THREE: I recruited for a Treasure Hunter this week.

Treasure hunting and scavenging together is a powerful combo that I may never see again — but how could I not choose Ken-Ken?

FOUR: Harrison Jones finally showed up in my Garrison the other day. Turns out, I do have my Archaeology up to 700 already — it’s just that I haven’t yet done enough digging to find all the Draenor things. Anyhow, I was anxious to get his mission done, just in case it disappeared from my quest log the next day. Unfortunately, I had to grade homework first that evening — so I stayed up later than I normally do on a weeknight afterward to play through the mission. It was a nice little story, with a fun little puzzle at the end (though the hardest part of the puzzle was figuring out how to actually interact with the device). I look forward to the next time Dr Jones shows up.

FIVE: Kamalia achieved Exalted status with the Arakkoa Outcasts a few weeks ago, thanks to all the Relics of Rukhmar that the followers in my various Garrisons collected, but she didn’t get the achievement that granted the follower. I was puzzled at what I’d missed, but didn’t follow up to try to find out. When I flew into Akeeta’s Hovel at the border of Arak and Shadowmoon to do my mission from Harrison Jones, a quest popped up to go talk to Terokk. Oh. I hadn’t been to Arak since I got Exalted with the Arakkoa. So I visited Terokk, and he proclaimed me Talon Queen, and then I got the achievement and the new follower.

SIX: This expansion is really making me wish that BloodHigh Elves were a playable race for the Alliance. For one thing, I would much, MUCH rather have the Alliance architecture than the Horde architecture for my Blood Elf Mage’s Garrison. For another, just the thought of running twelve Garrisons — one of each class Horde-side, plus a token Alliance character — is exhausting enough that I’ve thought about just leaving my Blood Elves behind this expansion. I am too fond of my Blood Elf Mage to want to leave her behind, though, and the Rogue and the Warlock were surprisingly fun to play when I was leveling them through Pandaria. Because I’ve already got a level 91 Alliance Mage (or two), I’ve seriously contemplated taking the Rogue and the Warlock over to the Alliance side and playing the non-Tauren classes as Alliance from here on out. Eight Horde Garrisons and three Alliance Garrisons would be a little less exhausting than eleven Horde Garrisons just because of the greater variety. I like Kaelinda, Kelisanna, and Kalaneia just as they are, as Blood Elves, though, and don’t really want to turn them into Humans (or any of the other Alliance races, for that matter). It would really be so much nicer if High Elves were a playable race for the Alliance…

.ONE: People must have complained on the forums about the Tauren DK colors getting dulled with the new models, because since Patch 6.1, the Underpowered Death Knight’s braids have been brilliant sapphire blue again.

The other two DK colors look a little bit more intense/saturated now than they were in 6.0, but they’re not as close to the originals as the blue-and-white.

the Underpowered Death Knight goes to Draenor

Around the time that she dinged 88, the Underpowered Death Knight decided that she wanted to go to Draenor, too.
No, thank you, she did not want to dink around in Pandaria gaining reputation with the Tillers and the Shado-Pan.
The buff against creatures from previous expansions had made questing in Cataclysm areas as a late-Mists level-range character trivial, and even the questing she’d done in Pandaria (getting her Grummlepack and opening the Vale) hadn’t been especially challenging.

So, after completing her annual Lunar Festival World Tour and dinging 90 in the process —

— off she went to the Dark Portal.

Seeking a proper challenge, she started out with her weakest weapon, a simple Training Sword. It didn’t take long before she realized that she wasn’t putting out enough damage to reliably survive. She tossed the Training Sword back into her bags and pulled out her Greataxe of the Ebon Blade.

I hadn’t really noticed with other characters that the encounters in Tanaan get progressively more difficult. The Umbral Halls segment was where it really started to get hard. The mobs are so dense that I died three or four times to patrols — the Underpowered Death Knight can handle one enemy (counting a pack of three Void Wolves as one enemy) at a time, but not two and certainly not three! I had to attempt Ner’zhul’s lieutenant a few times before I managed to work out a proper sequence of interrupts and cooldowns, and even then, it was close. There were many times in the Umbral Halls where I felt like just giving up, retreating to Pandaria with hanging head, and coming back to Tanaan after she’d gotten to, say, level 95 or so — but I persevered and eventually got through it.

The first part of the Blackrock Quarry area was easier than I’d anticipated — partly because another player happened to be running through at the same time and cleared out a lot of the mob density. In the second part of the Blackrock Quarry area, I just could not get past the Burning Blade overseer that holds the key to Ga’nar’s shackles. I tried three times, pulling out all the stops in the Underpowered Death Knight’s no-spec-and-no-talents-limited spellbook, and I just could not put out enough damage to kill that guy before the magic damage from his set-you-on-fire debuff killed me. My two available damage mitigation abilities, Icebound Fortitude and Anti-Magic Shell, have CDs that were too long for me to use one every time the dude set me on fire, and using Death Strike on CD didn’t heal enough to keep me alive, either. I could tell from the trouble I was having that fight that I wouldn’t have a chance against that gronn by the big tank.

About that time, I ran out of health potions (which the Underpowered Death Knight can use if she loots them) and was close to running out of food. Feeling a little bit desperate, the Underpowered Death Knight summoned a Death Gate and went to Acherus to buy some food and runeforge the Iron Horde Waraxe that she had received upon deactivating the Dark Portal. A little more strength and stamina and a lot more raw weapon damage might be just what she needed to make it through the Tanaan Jungle and get her Garrison established while still being suitably challenged. After she got to Frostfire Ridge, perhaps she could go back to her trusty Greataxe of the Ebon Blade?

I tried again, another three or four times, switching from Blood Presence to Frost Presence to get more DPS and attempting to use my abilities even more effectively. Having to wait ten minutes between attempts due to the CD on Army of the Dead made my failures even more frustrating. It still wasn’t enough; the lowest I ever got the guy before he burned me to death was 26%. The Underpowered Death Knight’s schtick/gimmick/goal is to have ordinary leveling questing be a challenge, but this was becoming as maddeningly frustrating as the Thunder Forge and Celestial Challenge solo scenarios in the Mists Legendary questline had been.

Equipping just one of the Tanaan quest reward armor pieces might provide enough more stamina and strength to beat the fight… at the expense of one of the key factors of the “Underpowered” playstyle challenge concept. Although I long ago established that the Underpowered Death Knight may use her DK starting zone weapons, using the Iron Horde Waraxe was still a stretch of the “no gear” factor.

Defeated, the Underpowered Death Knight retreated back to Azeroth to lick her wounds, soak up easy XP from the Darkmoon Faire and holiday quests, do some archaeology, do some rep grinds in Pandaria, and try Tanaan again in another level or so.

more things for Kamalia’s “to do” list

Kamalia has quite a few things lingering on her “to do” list. There’s those two Inn dungeon quests (the initial version) that she never got around to doing because the hotfix that made it so you don’t have to do all the Inn dungeon quests to get the level 3 Inn went through before she did them. There’s the Legendary quest to vanquish the end boss of Highmaul and pinch his toe-ring or whatever… and I doubt that I’ll get into LFR to do that until summer. And oh yeah, the Abrogator gubbins. I’ve gotten about 30 of those so far, from Garrison missions and random procs in my work order boxes. There’s Nat Pagle’s quest to fish up a lunker in each Draenor zone, which I haven’t done because I’m dithering over whether or not I actually want Nat as a follower in Kam’s Garrison (I do want him in the Hunter’s Garrison, eventually).

To that list, I’ve now added the Garrison music box quest. I’m not sure when I’ll do it, though. At first, I thought I’d try to do it this weekend. This weekend is still Lunar Festival, however, and I haven’t had time to do the Lunar Festival World Tour with the Underpowered Death Knight yet — and the Underpowered Death Knight is counting on all that holiday XP to get her a significant fraction of the way from her current level of 89 to 90.

Harrison Jones didn’t show up in Kam’s Garrison. Is he one of the RNG visitors and he might show up tomorrow, or the next day, or is he not deigning to visit me yet because I don’t have my Archaeology to 700 yet?

After I logged in and out with all my alts to load my heirlooms into the spiffy new Heirloom tab, I found that I have 41 of the 71 possible heirloom items — more than enough to qualify for the Chauffeured Chopper. I still don’t dig the Chauffeured Chopper enough to use it with my baby alts.

I’m not familiar enough with most of the new models to be able to notice how many of them (or which ones) recieved tweaks from the versions that came out with the pre-launch patch. I did immediately notice, however, that my Human Mage is less top-heavy, less busty, today than she was yesterday — and that’s a good thing! Her face looks better, too — though her monocle is now displaying really wierdly. It barely looks like it’s there at all — it just makes her eye look funny. My Draenei Mage looks more like her original self than the first version of the updated Draenei model did. And if I’m not mistaken, the Tauren female run got some adjustments; the first version of the new model run looked a lot like the Worgen female run to me, and while I appreciated that it made my girls look more fleet, it still felt wrong. Today, they look like they’re planting their hooves more solidly, feeling sure-footed like the original run without feeling quite as ponderous as the original run.

The new Blood Elf model suits the Warlock very well. The Rogue looks good, too. The Mage will take the most getting used to simply because I’m the most familiar with her — but her new look isn’t terrible or anything. It’s acceptable; she still looks thoughtful and sweet-tempered (for a Blood Elf). Except, of course, when she’s doing that tilted-head sneer. I used to like the tilted-head pose because I thought it looked contemplative. No more, alas. The sneer works for the Warlock and the Rogue, though!

Now that the updated models for the Blood Elves are finally done, I guess it’s time that I start working on updating my woefully out-of-date Characters page. Making all those character portraits on the current version of the page was a lot of work, though, and I did it last summer while I had less RL stuff to do. I’m not quite sure how I’ll fit that work in now. I think I’ll procrastinate it just a little bit longer — it’s always been difficult to get really good close-ups of my characters’ faces in-game (I used MogIt to get the close-ups for my current set of portraits) and I think the SELFIE camera might be just what I’m wanting for that. So now I have to wait for the two photography missions to show up in one or another of my Garrisons…

minipost: I want a chauffeur, but not for my chopper

For me, a new alt becomes “real” — that is, significantly less likely to be summarily deleted — when she reaches level 20 and can learn to ride. I’m not sure that I want to take that goalpost/milestone away from myself by acquiring a mount that I can use at level 1.

Perhaps, though, it’s just that I’m not really excited about a chauffeured Chopper.

If it were going to be a Chauffeured Hotrod —

— then, yeah, I’d be looking for ways to increase my heirloom hoard as quickly as I could.

I think Blizzard missed a great opportunity here!

minipost: look who showed up AGAIN

Because I’m usually logging in only once a day, I’m usually sending my followers on long missions instead of short missions. I therefore decided to recruit for High Stamina this week.

I had thought that once you saw a follower in the recruitment pane and chose someone else, you weren’t likely to see that follower again anytime soon. So I was quite surprised to see this guy show up again!

It was a tough choice between Yepa and Enola. I have fewer followers overall with Enola’s ability than I do followers with Yepa’s ability, though, so I chose Enola.

latecomer to the pink party

I’d recently made a new Transmogrification kit for my Paladin and hadn’t yet posted it, so I thought perhaps I’d pass on dressing her up for Love is in the Air this year. She kept poking me, however, that she hadn’t spent all that time in Hyjal Summit last year farming for the Blood-Stained Pauldrons to not wear them during Pink Season this year.

The Power of Pink


Blood-Stained Pauldrons, Bloodscale chestpiece belt & gloves, Imperial Plate Leggings, Chromatic Boots, Nethervoid Cloak, Skettis Curved Blade, Aegis of the Vindicator

Soulare is in another Garrison

Because Kamalia’s professions — skinning and leatherworking — are not primarily dependent upon herbs and ore, I wasn’t going to bother with raising her Garrison herb garden and mine past level 1. Her herb garden’s random generation of herbs has produced enough Gorgrond Flytrap to keep both herself and my Tailor well-stocked for their daily profession CDs — though that has been helped by my laxity in keeping my Barn supplied with trapped beasties to provide raw leather. My Alchemist, however, has run through the Frostweed that I’d stockpiled prior to bringing her out to Draenor, and the random generation of Frostweed by Kam’s herb garden does not reliably provide enough to guarantee my Alchemist her daily profession CD. Because it’s likely to be some time before I manage to get my Alchemist leveled up enough to unlock her own herb garden, I decided that I ought to go ahead and upgrade Kam’s herb garden to level 2 and recruit a follower to staff it.

When I recruited for an Herbalist this week, these are the three applicants that Akanja found:

Well, now. I know that Soulare of Andorhal can give you a toy, but I don’t really care much about collecting toys. I know that he’s a reference to some other game or pop-culture something, but I’m not familiar with the thing that is being alluded to, so I don’t need him in my Garrison for that. Being a Human Male, he does not fit into Kamalia’s highly discriminatory policy of hiring only Tauren or women through the Inn.

I chose Bim’ini instead.

Perhaps my Paladin will specifically try to recruit Soulare. If I can figure out how do to it, I’d like to have her get the Argent Crusade banners and guards for her Garrison, so he’d fit in well with her crew.