of sapphire panthers and jade kites

No sooner, it seemed, did I make a post saying that I probably wouldn’t ever make one of the jewelled panther mounts because I wasn’t really all that interested in them than I began to think that perhaps I should make one of them, after all. I’ve made all the Tailoring mounts and some of the Engineering mounts, so why not make at least one of the Jewelcrafting mounts, too? And I knew exactly which one I wanted to make — the blue one, to match the Sapphire Cub companion pet that is also created by Jewelcrafting. After spending a third of my gold at the BMAH to acquire a Blue Drake, spending half of my remaining gold an Orb of Mystery for a panther, instead of for the rocket, was just another setback. What really sealed the deal, though, was that my Paladin, who is also my Jewelcrafter, had the most mounts of all my characters — 149, just one short of the 150 needed to qualify for the Jade Pandaren Kite.

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a time for focus and a time for faffing

The beginning of an expansion is time for focus; time to focus on the character you want to be your “main” for the new content, whether that character is long-established or freshly-created; time to focus on getting that character leveled and well-reputed and well-geared.

The ending of an expansion is time for faffing; time to level alts, to catch up on things you’ve always wanted to do but didn’t quite manage to get done before, perhaps even to try some new things.

Tome reminded me that the Godmother has declared 2014 to be the Year of FAFF.

So far, mini-Kam has only done the one session of farming mogu in the Vale, looking for Skyshards. She got distracted by doing dailies for the Order of the Cloud Serpents, the August Celestials, the Shado-Pan (only when the August Celestials send her to Niuzao Temple), and yes, even the Tillers. I’ve deliberately been taking the Cloud Serpents and the Tillers slowly. I only do the full set of Cloud Serpent dailies when they’re on Windward Isle. I don’t feel like going into the hozen cave or the spider cave again, so on those days I just fish for sugar minnows and cook fish cakes. Likewise, I’m only doing the Tillers dailies that don’t go up onto the Skyrange or Springtail Crag — catching chickens, watering crops, pulling weeds, stomping marmots. Sometime around my sixth or seventh alt through the Tillers routine, I began to have an exceedingly uncomfortable feeling that the packs of small, weak Kunzen Rockflingers and Springtail Littlewhiskers are the children of their communities, and it’s hard to do those dailies without ending up killing at least one group of them.

The Pet Battling Monk found that the levels started to come a lot slower after she reached 40.

Thanks to the Lunar Festival and all that lovely XP from visiting Elders, she managed to make it to level 60 this week. Soon, she’ll head out to Shadowmoon Valley to test my lead team of level 25 Pandaren Air Spirit Ariel, level 24 Brilliant Kaliri Kiamore, and level 24 Pandaren Monk Navie Chan against Blood Knight Antari and attempt to open up the Outland pet trainer dailies.

Speaking of the Lunar Festival, the Underpowered Death Knight of course went out to visit all the Elders she could reach — though she skipped the ones in Alliance primary/secondary zones and the ones in Twilight Highlands. This tour naturally brought her to Northrend; while she was there, she convinced me to let her at least get started on the Argent Tournament.


She can do the jousting and the sword quests easily enough, but she had enough trouble with the mobs in a Borean Tundra archaeology digsite that I don’t want to let her even try the kill quests!

The very day that I posted about having captured Ghostcrawler, saying that the Hunter would be content with her thirty-six pets until she goes to Draenor, Mumper tweeted that the stable in the Garrison will allow pets to be displayed in groups of five. The Hunter began to think that perhaps she should tame four more pets to bring her total up to a nice round total of eight groups of five. That would still leave her plenty of room for creatures from Draenor. She knew right away which pet she wanted to seek out first. She’s spent the last couple of days in Sholazar Basin, patiently stalking Loque’nahak. After she catches him, her next destination will be the Molten Front because Cymre reminded me about Skarr and Karkin. The Hunter has not yet recruited the Druids of the Talon, so several days of Molten Front dailies will be a prerequisite to catching those handsome beasts.

The Paladin ran Heart of Fear and Terrace of Endless Spring LFR this week. She picked up enough T14 pieces to give her some fun Transmogrification ideas. She’s also been farming Heroic Hellfire Ramparts for the purple Judgment shoulders (I know, I know).

The Warrior, who hasn’t been to LFR in ages, queued up for Pinnacle of Storms this afternoon just so that she could pose with Lei Shen to show off her new Transmogrification kit.

Resounding Doom


Doomed Crown of Lei Shen, Pauldrons & Battleplate of Resounding Rings, Crafted Malevolent Gladiator’s Girdle of Prowess, Legguards of Lost Hope, Taldaram’s Plated Fists, Impaling Treads, Uroe, Harbinger of Terror, Cryptmaker

She then went through a certain amount of agony concerning a set that I will probably never make for her, even though it would look simply fantastic with her LFR Starshatter.

Iceguard helm chestpiece & leggings, Imperial Plate shoulders & boots, Swordhook Slingbelt, Flash Freeze Gauntlets/World Keeper’s Gauntlets, Starshatter (LFR)

I ground the Violet Eye rep to purchase the Iceguard patterns so that I could make them for the Underpowered Death Knight. They are terribly expensive, requiring large amounts of both khorium and primals, so I don’t want to make them twice! Then there’s the problem that those gloves are either a Blackwing Descent boss drop or require Exalted rep with the Earthen Ring — and the Warrior hasn’t even been to Vashj’ir!
I suppose I can dream that someday some kind of Transmogrification Wardrobe feature will allow the Warrior to wear this set even though she will have the belt and the sword, the Underpowered Death Knight will have the helm, chestpiece, and leggings, and if anyone has the gloves, it will probably be the Paladin.
ETA: The Warrior decided to go to Vashj’ir anyway because how can she farm for the Whitefin Axe if she can’t even get to the dungeon entrance?

The Warrior also discovered that the Thunder Bluff cloak, which she wants for another planned Transmogrification kit, requires Exalted reputation. Alas, she is only midway through Revered. I’ve already discovered that a level 90 character wearing a city tabard will get city rep in Old Hillsbrad — I wonder if that trick will work in Northrend and Cataclysm dungeons, too? (Tried it out in normal Stonecore — Yes, it does!)

I used to think I was a “casual” WoW player. Lately, however, I’ve come to believe that it would be more accurate to describe my WoW playstyle as “faffer”.

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rolling right along

Koralyra has dominated my playtime this week.

As you can see from these ding-shots, she’s been doing a fair bit of normal questing in between the pet battles and the digsites and the LFD — mostly for quest rewards that I know I will want later for Transmogrification purposes, some of which have even been useful to her now.

Each day, Kora visits all of the (Kalimdor) trainers whom she can easily reach given her current character level. She’s worked her way up to Grazzle the Great in Dustwallow Marsh. She’s going to skip Kela Grimtotem in Thousand Needles until she gets flying, however, because it’s really quite a hassle to get to that trainer on foot.

I’m having a bit of a dilemma with Kora’s Archaeology. Kamalia found all the night elf and fossil relics a long time ago, but she never managed to find the Staff of Sorcerer-Thane Thaurissan or Zin’rokh, Destroyer of Worlds. Kamalia still needs to find the Staff of Ammunae, Scimitar of the Sirocco, and Scepter of Azj’Aqir, too, so she’d greatly prefer to trade all her crated Pandarian artifacts for tol’vir fragments and let some other character do the grunt work of finding those last BoA dwarf and troll relics. Thus, I’d really like Kora to dig in Eastern Kingdoms where there are mostly dwarf and troll sites. As Horde, however, all her pet trainer dailies are in Kalimdor, where all the convenient digsites are night elf ruins. With pet battling and digging not interlacing nicely, I’m going to have to spend extra time to do the Archaeology the way I really want to do it.

Toward the end of the week, I happened to randomly open my guild pane while I was out and about with Kora. To my surprise, the guild news included having completed “Classy Tauren”! I double-checked, and sure enough, there it was:

The Monday datestamp suggests that the guild got the achievement when Koralyra became honored with the guild, though I don’t remember seeing the achievement toast pop up. So now Koralyra feels slightly superfluous. She is going to carry on anyway. I’m beginning to catch that pet battle fever with her, even thinking so far as to bring up some Elemental and Humanoid pets in my battles against the lower-level trainers so that I’ll have good teams to face off against Cassandra Kabooom’s 3x Mechanical team and Grazzle the Great’s 3x Dragonkin team. Koralyra has some fashion-related goals, too. She’s decided that she wants to collect and wear all of the Devotees of the August Celestials outfits I created for Alt Appreciation — Kate certainly doesn’t have room in her wardrobe for all that stuff. I’m also going to have Kora collect Party Clothes so that I can clear some of those things out of Kamalia’s overflowing bank and void storage.

That I am, indeed, beginning to catch that pet battle fever became even more obvious yesterday evening, when I finally managed to get my Warlock to Outland –

– and caught myself thinking, “while ‘Neia’s here, she should visit the Outland pet trainers”. To which Kalaneia replied, “Uh-uh. That’s Lyra’s schtick.”

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can’t stay away for very long

Well, here I am at the Argent Tournament yet again.

This week’s discussion of mount collecting reminded me that I am still missing some of the Argent Tournament mounts. I decided that I should just go get them, even if I’m not terribly excited about them, so that I can tick them off the list of relatively easy mounts to obtain and get my mount barn that much closer to qualifying for the Jade Pandaren Kite. My characters who have already maximized their ability to earn Champion’s Seals declined to take up this tedious chore, saying they had better things to do with their time. Thus, the task has fallen to Kinevra, my only Alliance character who is high enough level to participate in the Tournament.

At least she can still get XP from it. Furthermore, after the various outfits I’ve made with the Sunreaver tabard, it will be fun finally have a character with the beautiful Silver Covenant tabard.

Meanwhile, my golden, azure, jade, and onyx cloud serpents have been feeling like their clutch is incomplete without a crimson cloud serpent. Because I haven’t been doing any dungeon running with the sort of regular, coherent group that could work on heroic dungeon achievements, I’m not going to be getting the regular crimson cloud serpent. Someone was going to have to farm Mogu in the Vale for Skyshards to bring down Alani and get the thundering crimson cloud serpent. A bit surprisingly, mini-Kam decided that she wanted to be the one to do it. Even more surprisingly, beating up the Mogu with an Enhancement Shaman is more fun than doing it with any of other characters who’ve previously done Golden Lotus rep.

This also meant that mini-Kam was going to have to start working on some Pandarian faction reps, specifically Order of the Cloud Serpents and August Celestials.

I will probably start doing the Shado-Pan with her, too, when the August Celestial dailies are at Niuzao. And it’s tempting to do the Tillers, as well, so that I can grow cabbages for the Shado-Pan and striped melons for the August Celestials…

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leveling ADD

Well, now that I don’t have the Legendary Cloak haunting me as unfinished business anymore, it feels like the leveling floodgates have opened. In the past few days, five alts — including a brand-new one — have gotten some serious playtime.

Kaelinda the Blood Elf Mage, who’d been sitting at about halfway through level 88 since she accomplished her goal on the Molten Front, pushed through a bit of the Townlong Steppes, some of the Dread Wastes, and a few dungeons to become my tenth level 90 character.

Kilauea the Troll Shaman went from level 22 to level 25, putting her right at-level to do Arathi Highlands and then the Hinterlands, two zones which I have not yet quested through since Cataclysm.

Kalaneia the Blood Elf Warlock went from level 55 to level 58. She might have gotten to level 60, but then I got distracted….

Tome and I took our wee Dwarf lassies, Flaminga the Warlock and Kjerstin the Shaman, to the Wetlands and played through most of the first major hub there before Tome had to sign off. Kjerstin is already overleveled for the zone, so she didn’t quite get a level out of it, but I really want to see the storyline.

When BTH and I began leveling our Monks, I joined BTH’s guild with my Monk so that we’d have the same guild XP bonuses — my personal guild wasn’t yet leveled enough to have all of those perks. That meant, however, that my little all-Tauren guild has been missing Monk from the “Classy Tauren” achievement. My guild is now leveled enough to have all the XP perks, so I moved my Monk over to it… but that did not give me the ‘chieve. It seems that I have to actually ding 85 with the class-race combo in-guild to get the ‘chieve credit. So I rolled a new Monk. I started her as a Pandaren, so that she could have the cool Wandering Isle leather gear for RP wear, then race-changed her after she got to Kalimdor. She is going to level primarily through LFD, Archaeology, and Pet Battles.

And though I haven’t managed to give her any playtime yet, Kelisanna the Blood Elf Rogue wants to level, too. BTH gave me Mistborn for my birthday, and Keli is still too low-level even to acquire the Survivor’s Bag of Coins, let alone use it.

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Hope’s Bright Flame

Some five seasons had passed since Kamalia had recieved the mysterious note directing her to meet with the Black Prince at the Tavern in the Mists.

29 September 2012

1 October 2012

Kamalia knew she was not the only adventurer whom Wrathion was sponsoring, yet the dragonling had waited with great patience for her to complete his tasks and had praised her accomplishments with as much respect as if she had been swift to do his bidding.

16 January 2013

Three stages of Wrathion’s plot had been especially difficult for Kamalia.

Somewhat surprisingly, those stages had not been the missions that required her to engage in active combat against members of the Alliance. She faltered with exhaustion about halfway through the task to collect six thousand valor merits, taking about twice as long to do it as the absolute minimum time in which it could have been done.

20 April 2013

Her first attempts to assist Wrathion at the Thunder Forge demoralized her so badly that she needed a month to recover before she made any more serious attempts… and even then, she only managed to succeed by sheer luck and the skin of her teeth.

30 October 2013

After her first experience with Chi-Ji’s challenge at the Red Crane’s still-Sha-soaked temple in the Krasarang Wilds, doubt and despair overwhelmed Kamalia. Over two months passed before she felt like she could try again.

6 January 2014

At last, only one test remained: to defeat each of the August Celestials in combat at their court on the Timeless Isle.

“Champion,” said Wrathion, “you’ve done it!” He meant to say more, the same spiel about “few mortals posess such spirit, such power — believe me, I have tested many!” that he gave to all of the adventurers who had managed to complete his campaign, but the tauren shaman interrupted him.

“Finally!” she cried, her voice holding that curious note, peculiar to the mammalian races, of simultaneous laughter and weeping. She flung out her arms and caught Wrathion up in a completely unexpected embrace.

Finding his face suddenly smashed into her bosom, Wrathion let out a startled squawk and shifted into his dragon form. That form still being a mere whelpling, however, she just grinned wider and squeezed him tighter.

A chord of smothered laughter hummed out behind them: Yu’lon’s contralto and Chi-Ji’s tenor floating over the deep rumbling basses of Xuen and Niuzao.

Kamalia dropped Wrathion so quickly that he landed in an undignified heap of wings and tail before he had the presence of mind to shift back into his humanoid form. She backed up a few steps, flushing deeply.

“Hero,” Xuen purred, “You are an inspiration!”

“I knew you were destined for greatness,” Chi-Ji affirmed.

“Not bad,” Niuzao nodded.

“The pandaren will sing your praises for ages to come,” Yu’lon smiled.

“A legend is born!” Lorewalker Cho exclaimed. “Come, my dear friend, meet me in the Seat of Knowledge, and let me tell your story!”

Wrathion and Lorewalker Cho disagreed over what aspects of Kamalia’s Pandarian adventures were most important. To Kamalia, though, their desired emphases were merely two faces of a single coin.

Wrathion presented Kamalia with his final gift, and at long last, she had it: her very own Legendary item!

8 January 2014

But Wrathion wasn’t quite done with Kamalia. He charged her with one more task — one which she was eager to complete.

8 January 2014

Powers above Kamalia’s control stepped in, however, and Wrathion was not pleased with the report she brought him.

“Good-bye and good riddance!” she muttered under her breath as the Black Prince shifted into his whelpling form and flapped off in a huff. Her annoyance dissipated quickly, though, and she soon found herself wondering when she would see the young dragon again… and if his private army of empowered adventurers would indeed be adequately Prepared when his terrifying visions became Azeroth’s reality. Stroking the rich fabric of her powerful new cloak, Kamalia felt the warmth of Chi-Ji’s kindness and hope blooming in her heart and mind, and believed that they would.

~*~*~

Hope’s Bright Flame

Helm of Affinity, Champion’s Pauldrons, Impenetrable Breastplate, Bloodspattered Sash, Patroller’s War-Kilt, Seer’s Linked Gauntlets, War Mace of Unrequited Love, Swamplight Lantern, Jina-Kang, Kindness of Chi-Ji
The name of this outfit is inspired by the proc effect of Jina-Kang, Kindness of Chi-Ji, which reminds me of a lyric from one of my favorite hymns, Press Forward, Saints.

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all grown up

Well, it’s taken me a whole year to do it, but I finally got a pet to level 25.


Fittingly, this first pet to reach maximum level is the pet that persuaded me to give pet battling a try — my lovely #FFW_2012 gift from Kialesse.

Next, I need to get Kiamore and Navie Chan to level 25. After that, I’ll bring up pets from the other seven families, picking up the No Favorites and All Pets Allowed achievements along the way. If I can take down some of the tamers I haven’t yet attempted while I’m at it, that would be great — and if I can get all that done before Warlords launches, that would be even better!

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missions accomplished

For the past several weeks, I’ve had Kaelinda at the Molten Front and Karaelia at the Argent Tournament. By happy coincidence, it worked out that today was both Kaelinda’s last day on the Molten Front and Karaelia’s last day at the Argent Tournament.

Kaelinda recruited Ricket and acquired her Widow’s Clutches…

…now she just needs the matching Ruby Slippers to drop from the Karazhan Opera.

The achievement that awards the Crusader title is account-wide, but Karaelia wanted it earn it properly, for herself, because she is a Paladin. Besides, the Crusader quartermaster, Dame Evniki Kapsalis, won’t sell anything to a character who hasn’t earned the achievement for themself, and I’d decided that I wanted the two Crusader’s mounts — the general Warhorse and the Paladin-specific Charger. I had thought that Karaelia would have to spend some time at the Tournament after she became a Crusader collecting Champion’s Seals. Perhaps it was because she was already Exalted with the Argent Crusade, having done most (if not all) of the quests that give rep for that faction while she was leveling, or perhaps it was because she is a Paladin; for whatever reason, the Crusader dailies opened up for her as soon as she became Champion of Thunder Bluff (but the Dame still wouldn’t sell her anything). Thus, by the time she became Champion for the fifth home city and completed the requirements for the achievement, she had already collected all the Champion’s Seals she needed to buy not only the mounts, but also the tabard.

Crusader Karaelia, the Argent Champion

Thunderwood Helm, Forgotten Peacekeeper Shoulders, Imperial Plate Chest, Crafted Dreadful Gladiator’s Clasp of Meditation, Inkling’s Leggings, Gauntlets of Purification + Bracers of Ancient Tales, Glintrok Sollerets, Holy War Sword, Highlord’s Favor, Argent Crusader’s Tabard
This outfit turned out very differently from how I originally imagined I might make an Argent Crusade kit for Karaelia — more silver, less gold. I’m really pleased with it, though. When I saw how nicely the Crafted Dreadful Gladiator’s Ornamented Spaulders coordinated with the helm, I almost used them. That was a little too much of the dull silver and gold tones than I really wanted for this kit, though. I might have to make another set that mixes and matches the Thunderwood set and the Crafted Dreadful Gladiator’s Redemption set later.

Between the Pilgrim’s Bounty series of cooking quests and digging and digging and digging in Eastern Kingdoms to get a few fossil digsites to open up so that she could build up a good stock of fragments for Fun for the Little Ones, the Underpowered Death Knight went from level 74 to nearly level 77 during the last week of November. Seeing how close she was to 77, she started trying to persuade me to dig some more to get her all the way there so that she could go to the Argent Tournament.
Ohhh, NO! I told her. Oh no, no, no. Karaelia may be almost done, but I am NOT starting those up with you anytime soon. I’m pretty tired of those dailies by now, and I need a break before I begin doing them again. You could only handle the arena jousting and the sword quest anyway, so it would be SOOOO slow for you. No.

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Dress Up! #5: the Loregeek

As I contemplated the fifth Batinna’s Dress Up theme, it seemed to me that the single geekiest item of clothing in all the fashion catalogs of both Azeroth and Draenor would have to be the Loremaster’s Colors.

Kamalia is justly proud well-pleased with herself for having completed the Loremaster achievement pre-Cataclysm — but seriously, what am I supposed to wear with that?

At the time that I first obtained this tabard, I put together a few RP-oriented outfits. They were mostly cloth, and some of them could be worked up into proper Transmogrification kits for a cloth-wearing character without too much difficulty. But Kamalia is not a cloth-wearing character, so making a proper Transmogrification kit for her to wear with this tabard took a little more thought.

Loregeek


Steamworker’s Goggles, Replica Pauldrons of Elements, Nexus-Strider chestpiece leggings & gloves, Imbued Infantry Belt, Tsunami Boots, Knight’s War Hammer, Dungeoneering Guide, Loremaster’s Colors
The base elements of this outfit are meant to suggest the stereotypical college history professor in tweed jacket or navy blazer, jeans, and loafers. Part of being a loregeek is enthusiasm for the lore of one’s favorite class, thus the iconic Shaman shoulders. Xarantaur‘s Lorehammer is identical to the 2H Commanding Mallet; the Knight’s War Hammer is a sufficiently similar 1H mace. Finally, the style, colors, and name of the Dungeoneering Guide recall the design of the source manuals for that famously geeky pasttime, Dungeons & Dragons.

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Quintessential Quintet

This week, my characters already at level 90 ticked off quite a few of their objectives, so this weekend I took my Hunter, Ketura, out to join Nesingwary’s expedition to Pandaria.

I think the addition of a taxidermist to the Nesingwary entourage is hilariously wonderful! One of my great-grandfathers was a taxidermist, and my maternal grandparents’ house was decorated with a couple of his deer heads and a bobcat pelt wall hanging. As a child, I always loved going to the Monte L Bean Life Science Museum to see all the animals — and as an adult, I still love it.

Then Ketura went to Stoneplow and Paoquan Hollow.


I always feel so sorry for Lin Tenderpaw when I do this quest chain, as my character progresses right along while she is stuck endlessly pummeling her poor paws into paste against that rock while the Hidden Master disparages her ability.

After that, I went up to Kun-Lai Summit and finished everything but the Burlap Trail.

Ketura had a much easier time with the Darkspear Rebellion stuff than Keija the Warrior did because Kamalia could craft her a set of the Crafted Deadly Gladiator’s gear right away, whereas Keija is my Blacksmith (and still hasn’t finished learning the Lightning Steel CD patterns).

I’d been looking forward to wearing this set because I love the asymmetric shoulders, fancy belt buckle, and pheasant feathers in the helm. It’s very handsome as-is, but as a Transmogrification fanatic, I couldn’t resist mixing it up just a little:

Of the characters that I had at level 85 at the end of Cataclysm, only my Druid and my Human Mage haven’t yet gotten to level 90. Kerisa will make it to 90 eventually — I should start queueing for an LFD a day with her so that I can learn how to Tree. Unless I decide that I really really want to get Double Agent before the next expansion comes out and burn her from 85 to 90 via LFD, however, Kinevra probably will not make it to 90. I’m more interested in bringing up my Tauren Priest and Paladin and my first and favorite Mage, the Blood Elf Kaelinda.

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