the Underpowered Death Knight blows her horn

Thanks in large part to the sample-giving and crown-crushing Love is in the Air dailies, the Pet Battling Monk and the Underpowered Death Knight both dinged 80 this week.

I thought the Pet Battling Monk would bypass questing in Northrend by doing Archaeology in Eastern Kingdoms. As it happened, she didn’t do any more Archaeology — she ran LFD instead. I feel like I’m getting a much better understanding of the “spend mana, spend chi, drink tea” Mistweaver routine with this character than I did with my first Monk.

The Pet Battling Monk also finally chose some primary professions. She took Tailoring because making one Imperial Silk per day just isn’t going to get all my characters’ inventories upgraded to Royal Satchels fast enough. Having two Tailors on my main server will keep poor Kaohana from being chained to Sunsong Ranch and the Silken Fields until Warlords is almost over. She took Leatherworking because I want to have a character who can wear the leather version of the Black Temple BoP crafted shoulders. Though she has trained those two professions, I haven’t put any time into collecting mats and actually skilling them up yet.

The Underpowered Death Knight did some Argent Tournament dailies and quite a bit of Northrend Archaeology to get to her ding. Though it may look, in that picture above, like she dinged from killing those two Gjalerbron vrykul, she actually dinged from picking up the Archaeology find that she was just about to survey for when the big dudes attacked her.

The Underpowered Death Knight celebrated reaching level 80 by doing a tour of all the Unborn Val’kyr spawn sites and digging up all the digsites along the way. Although she didn’t see an Unborn Val’kyr anywhere, she captured a few other nice pets, and she collected enough Vrykul relic fragments to piece together the Vrykul Drinking Horn. I’ve macroed the Vrykul Drinking Horn together with her Horn of Winter, so it should always be up when she’s in combat, at least. It makes her as tall as a Camp Winterhoof taunka, though not quite as tall as a Skorn vrykul.


This is better than the Crown of Eternal Winter!
Although obtaining the Vrykul Drinking Horn has satisfied her original reason for wanting to take up Archaeology, the Underpowered Death Knight will most likely continue to do Northrend and Eastern Kingdoms Archaeology all the way from level 80 to level 90 — I don’t have any great desire to take her through either the Cataclysm zones or Pandaria. And as long as she’s in Northrend, she might as well keep looking for an Unborn Val’kyr.

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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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the rocket will have to wait

A couple of months ago, I mentioned that I was saving my gold to buy Orbs of Mystery to build myself a Geosynchronous World Spinner. I wanted to get my gold total up to about 75K, so that I wouldn’t be left totally broke after spending 54K on the Orbs of Mystery. I was at around 52K at the time, and I do not make gold actively or even “accidentally”; this week, I was up to about 62K.

When Kregga visited the Black Market Auction House yesterday, there was a Blue Drake up. I’ve seen Blue Drakes on the BMAH before, but either I haven’t had the 20K to spare for a starting bid, or I bid and then quickly got overbid, or the bid was already up higher than I was willing to spend. This time, no-one had bid on it yet, and I did have 20k on-hand… All evening, I kept quickly switching over to Kregga to see if I’d been outbid yet. By the time I went to bed, no-one had outbid me yet. I hoped that no-one would come along and scoop me while I was asleep…

Fortunately, no-one did.

Oh frabjous day, I finally have a Blue Drake!

Now, Blizz, you’ve done all the other Dragonflights, so when are you going to give us a Green Drake Mount?

And the rocket will have to wait until I’ve gathered some spare change by leveling a bunch of alts through the Warlords content. But that’s okay. I didn’t get around to grinding the rep to be able to build the Mechano-Hog until about a year ago, in part because I couldn’t afford the really expensive components until then — and this is kind of the same thing.

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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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the sad case of Noodle Master Chin

If this is so, then why do neither Noodle Master Chin nor his assistant Noodlemonger Yol actually sell noodles?

And does Noodle Master Chin resent not having been invited to bring a noodle cart to the Celestial Court?

Noodle Master Chin must be a very balanced, harmonious pandaren indeed for Dawn’s Blossom to not have become overshadowed by a Sha of Sulking after the Timeless Isle reappeared.

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I’m saving my gold for…

WoW Insider’s Breakfast Topics usually go by so fast that I don’t manage to respond to them. I had a few spare minutes this morning, though, so I thought I’d tell y’all what I am saving my gold to buy.

As I have levelled and done dailies and LFR, I’ve been watching the total gold counter in Altoholic slowly tick upwards. None of my characters are rich; the most wealthy are sitting at 10-12k and my total gold is currently somewhere around the 52k mark.

When I get to around 75k, I plan to pool most of that gold onto Kamalia and send her out to talk to Big Keech — a considerably more dangerous expedition these days than it used to be — to buy three Orbs of Mystery. She will then send them to Ketura, my Engineer, who will temporarily swap her specialization from Goblin to Gnome so that she can craft the Geosynchronous World Spinner.

Then I will start slowly saving gold again to someday, perhaps by the end of Warlords of Draenor, purchase that Grand Expedition Yak… assuming that Mystic Birdhat will change his career from Reforging to Transmogrification in 6.0.

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professional reorganization

After writing my Warrior Week post, my mind ran along a train of thought that went something like this:
I originally intended my Death Knight to become my primary bank alt.
I don’t really want to roll a new character to be my primary bank alt because I am rather fond of the mixed-armor-type banking outfits I have assembled for my Death Knight.
Why, then, is my Death Knight not currently my primary bank alt?
Because of her professions.
Because she is my Enchanter, she’s a high priority alt to level in a new expansion.
Because she is not an Engineer, she can’t use the mechanical auctioneers in capital locations such as Dalaran and the Shrines in the Vale.
I should make some other character my Enchanter so that my Death Knight is not quite so high in the leveling queue for the next expansion.
I should trade my Death Knight’s Enchanting for Engineering so that she can continue to serve as primary bank alt even while she is in the newest expansion’s capital.
Which of my relatively high priority characters has a profession “to spare” that could be traded for Enchanting?
Hmm, Tailoring and Enchanting are a very traditional combination of professions, and my Priest doesn’t really need to be an Herbalist.
My Death Knight would only need to level Engineering to 75, so as to be able to get a trickle of XP from the Darkmoon Faire after the next expansion comes.

I began preparing for the switch immediately, though I didn’t execute it until last night, after my Priest finally dinged 90.

With my standard practice of keeping one full stack and one partial stack of most crafting materials in my guild bank, I had plenty of essences and shards on hand. Dusts, however, were another matter. Fortunately, it only took a couple of days of watching the AH to get the dusts I needed for 1-300. I’d been stockpiling arcane, infinite, and hypnotic dusts for use in making imbued cloths for Tailoring, but I only had a third to a half of what I’d need for leveling Enchanting from scratch. Collecting enough arcane dust was as simple as taking all of my level 90 characters to Karazhan, mowing down all the big trash packs, and picking up only cash and DEables until their available empty bag slots were all filled. Some saronite shuffling with my Jewelcrafter readily produced the needed infinte dust. My Priest still had a few Potions of Treasure Finding left over from farming Embersilk Cloth to level her Tailoring, so I used up those to farm DEables and more cloth, which I converted into Deathsilk Bracers and then DE’d. I also did a bit of elementium shuffling with my Jewelcrafter. The tailored bracers turned out to be the most reliable source of hypnotic dust, as they had the highest dust/essence DE ratio.

Come the expansion and its Garrisons, this kind of professions curation may be less necessary. Seeing as how we don’t even have a beta start date, let alone a release date, yet, however, I’m glad to have made this change.

The Priest is now my 8th class to 90 and my 9th level 90 character overall. The Blood Elf Mage is currently about 75% of the way from 87 to 88, and I’m not planning to make a focused effort to push her to 90. She’s getting enough XP from collecting Marks of the World Tree that she’ll get there before Warlords comes, even if the Molten Front doesn’t quite get her all the way to that level 90 ding. The Warlock and the Rogue will probably argue over who should get the free ticket to 90 until Warlords launches — though it doesn’t really matter, because it seems likely that Blizz will end up selling additional boosts to 90 in the store, and then they will both get boosted. Based on the preview material from BlizzCon, I’m feeling like perhaps after the initial first rush to 100 with Kamalia in tandem with BTH’s Bear, I may be more interested in playing Warlords as Alliance than as Horde. Thus, the next alt up, once Kaohana finishes her Pandaria reps, will be Kjerstin the Dwarf Shaman.

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Lady of the Manor

Beyond the wonderful new character models, other aspects of Warlords of Draenor sound pretty exciting, too. My Warlock and my Rogue immediately began pulling each others’ hair over who should get the free ticket to 90. The inventory clean-ups will be a huge relief — though they won’t help much with the characters whose banks and void storage are entirely stuffed with clothes and weapons.

Relative to Pet Battles — in which I still haven’t gotten even one pet to level 25 yet and which I will probably only do until I manage to beat 40 tamers to get the Tamer title for my Beastmaster Hunter and the Safari Hat for my bank alts to look stylish — I think that the Garrison is more likely to be a minigame I could really get into and enjoy. When the feature was first announced, before many details were given, people briefly speculated that the Garrison might be a Guild Hall. I did think it would be pretty cool for my little me-myself-and-I guild(s) to have a communal home. But what if the Garrison would only be available to level 25 guilds? Dawnstrider Tribe is only level 18, and that’s after leveling six characters to 90 and doing LFR and stuff with them. And if the Garrison were to be a guild feature, surely it would take tons of effort to acquire and upgrade, similar to the massive contributions required to gain the fish feast and cauldrons in Cataclysm. So I was pleased to hear that the Garrison will be a form of individual player housing.

The professions buildings of the Garrison will definitely be a boon to players who have One True Main and don’t really have very many alts. I’m not quite sure what I am going to do with the professions buildings, though. I’ve spent the last three expansions carefully curating my alts’ professions — Dawnstrider Tribe has all of the professions represented at a high level (my Tailor is not quite to 600 yet, but will be very soon) — and I am loath to let all that work sit and get dusty. I’ll also want to get the real profession goodies — especially any good-looking crafted clothes for Transmogrification — so I will be leveling my alts and their professions anyway. Thus, on my primary server, at least, I will probably end up using the professions buildings just to get Kam through until I can get my various alts leveled. It will still be fun, though, to play with choosing just the right Garrison layout and set of building specializations for each character.

Reading Hawtpants of the Old Republic for the past couple of years, I’ve been rather intrigued by SW:TOR’s companions system. I like how the Garrison incorporates that concept as the Followers… though I think that, from an in-character perspective, my tauren will probably be a little uncomfortable with having followers. My blood elves, however, will probably enjoy being Lady of the Manor a great deal.

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Shado-Pan Green Cabbage Soup

Every day, when the Shado-Pan Trainee comes to pick up my green cabbages, he says,

I’m never quite sure if he’s being sincere or sarcastic.

On the premise that he is sincere, I decided to try to figure out just what sort of soup the Shado-Pan make with all those green cabbages I grow for them. This recipe is adapted from these two asian cabbage soup recipes that Google found for me.

Shado-Pan Green Cabbage Soup
4 servings

8 Dried Mushrooms (preferrably shiitake)
4 c Golden Carp Consomme, divided (or chicken or vegetable broth)
1 onion, thinly sliced
1-3 cloves garlic, minced
1/2 head of Green Cabbage, chopped
1 Juicycrunch Carrot, cut into matchsticks
1 inch knob of Ginseng, peeled and thinly sliced (or regular ginger)
2-3 T Thousand Year Soy Sauce
Cindergut Pepper sauce, to taste (asian chili paste or Tabasco sauce)
2-3 Scallions, shredded, including the green parts

Heat 2 c of the broth and soak the dried mushrooms for about 15 minutes.

While the mushrooms are soaking, caramelize the onions in a dry pot over medium heat. When the onions are just starting to turn brown on the edges, add the garlic and cook, stirring, for another 2-3 minutes, or until the onions are golden brown and the garlic is starting to brown also.

Add the remaining 2 c of broth to the pot. Strain the mushrooms and add the mushroom-infused broth to the pot. Stir the ginger, carrots, and cabbage into the broth. Bring to a boil, then turn the heat down and simmer, covered, for 10-15 minutes.

Remove the stems from the mushrooms and discard. Thinly slice the mushroom caps. Stir the mushrooms, soy sauce, and chili into the soup and garnish with scallions immediately before serving.

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faffing ‘folio

Since Katewatha reached level 90, she’s been busily working on her rep with the Tillers, the Shado-Pan, the August Celestials, the Order of the Cloud Serpents, and the Lorewalkers. These have all been going pretty quickly because I did eventually purchase the commendations for the “fun” factions as well as the serious ones.

Kate found an Onyx Egg while doing her very first set of Cloud Serpents dailies — something that Kamalia never managed to do — and that got her to Revered on that very first day.
She spent yesterday afternoon flying around reading lorescrolls, following this guide for mainland Pandaria and then this guide for the Isle of Thunder. I didn’t go visit the Seat of Knowledge until I’d collected all of the stories, and when I dinged Exalted, I still had five scrolls left to find.

Ketura, meanwhile, has been questing through the Jade Forest. She’s done a lot of rambling about in the southern part of the zone, following road signs to explore Alliance questing areas such as the Den of Sorrow and the Dreamer’s Pavillion. The Den of Sorrow uses the same cave design as Huo’s shrine on the Wandering Isle — I’m glad to see that such a lovely, unique location isn’t completely hidden away in that phased content. I wondered, though, how Lorewalker Cho acquired a poster of the Karazhan “Oz” backdrop to hang on the walls of his courtyard.

I was glad that I didn’t have to go all the way to the destruction of the statue to obtain the complete Fox Grove/Jade Witch set for Ketura.

After I initially collected this set with Kamalia (who didn’t keep it), I looked forward to collecting it for Ketura (to save) for a couple of reasons. First, I thought it would be perfect with this gun — the Bronze Blaster is a quest reward from End Time, but its design looks very Pandaren to me. Second, I thought it would mix-and-match well with the Gilneas City Guard set.

And it does — the two sets coordinate so very well that I’m having a terrible time deciding which of the following three combinations is my favorite!

While Kate was out searching for lorescrolls, I noticed how pretty the floor in the main chamber of the Crane Temple is:

and that’s probably why, when I was running LFR yesterday night, I noticed how pretty the floor in the courtyard where the Council of Elders meets is, too:

I haven’t run a meter since Ultraxion, so I don’t really know how effective my healing in LFR is. Perhaps I should start doing it again, though, because I’ve been feeling like I’ve gotten really sloppy.

I realize that I’m really quite late to the party with this observation, but with all the excitement about a new froggie model in Patch 5.2, I’m a bit surprised that none of my other Shaman friends (Effy, Matty, Saz) seem to have posted about how Hex now uses the new froggie instead of the old one.

Or did you, and I just wasn’t paying attention well enough and missed it?

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