still plugging away at mog farming

Oh, I am so tired of Blackwing Lair. So tired of Razorgore and the eggs, so tired of the suppression room. But Nefarian hasn’t dropped my Priest’s robe yet, and Chromaggus hasn’t dropped my Rogue’s shoulders yet, and Broodlord hasn’t dropped my Paladin’s boots yet, and Vaelastrasz only drops his shield for people other than my three shield users. And so I keep coming back, every Tuesday, hoping that this week, the things I want will drop so that I won’t have to come back again next week.

I’m still working on getting a few bits and pieces from other tiers*, too, and trying to get a couple of raid drops that aren’t tier pieces. I’m almost finished with Outland dungeons — I just need one item from one Heroic. I’m starting to say to myself, as I look through my list of things that might be nice to have, “ehh, I don’t really need that” or “meh, I’ll farm that if and when I think of a mog idea that would actually use it”.

After all, I already have so many fun-looking items** that I could probably do another year or more of “Sunday on the Promenade” before I’ve used everything in my wardrobe*** at least once.

Although my choice to ignore the Patch 7.2 content in favor of focusing on filling the gaps in my wardrobe was deliberate and considered, by now, I’m starting to feel like I’m really falling behind. Seeing that this week’s Legionfall quest is to kill three Elites, I wonder if there will be enough people still doing Broken Shore stuff to help me with that when I finally manage to catch up. I basically haven’t done World Quests since Kamalia got to 36 traits in all of her Artifacts. I haven’t been running Order Hall missions. Most of my characters haven’t even been to their Order Halls for weeks, except to change the color of their Artifacts. So I’ve been taking the baby step to ease myself back into Legion content of starting to spend time fishing up the coins in the New Dalaran fountain.

Just as I’m wanting to start doing current content again, however, my 10-week-old baby has decided that he needs to be carried. Last week, I could just hold him in my off-hand arm while I read a book, typed, or ran through a legacy content dungeon or raid using my main hand. This week, I can’t get away with that anymore. Being moving by being in the swing isn’t good enough; after a few minutes, he will start yelling. Being held isn’t good enough; if I sit still for longer than a minute or two while holding him, he will start yelling. I either have to be walking around with him or, if I’m sitting down, actively playing with him instead of just passively holding him. This new behavior is even worse for my summer plans to revise lab manuals and restructure my online homework assignments than it is for my WoW-playing goals…

* Well, all the legacy content through Cataclysm, that is. I’ll wait until my characters are level 110 and wearing at least World Quest-level gear to attempt the Mists raids and Warlords dungeons.

** Some collected recently, some collected not-so-recently (but I still haven’t quite gotten around to actually using them)

*** All the items that I actually like, at any rate. I’m not going to try to use the stuff that I don’t particularly like!

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derailed by mog farming

Kamalia, of course, got her second set of Champions long ago. My Mage, Demon Hunter, Hunter, Death Knight, and Rogue got their second sets of Champions and fourth tint for the default Artifact style, and I was thinking that project was ticking along nicely.

Then my Hunter decided that she needed the T2 shoulders for a Mog. I’d been avoiding BWL because I didn’t know if I could get past Razorgore — and my first three or four tries ended in defeat — but a quick check of Wowhead turned up a strategy that solved that problem. So then my four clothies decided that they needed to start running BWL too, to get their T2 and to get a non-tier robe that drops from one of the three black drakes. And then there were things I wanted from the first two or three bosses of BWD and ICC, and weapons from deep in Ulduar, for Mog ideas I probably won’t make for months or years… In short, I’ve spent the past two or three weeks neglecting leveling in the Broken Isles in favor of running multiple alts through multiple old raids.

Probably when 7.2 comes out I’ll be distracted from doing the Legionfall stuff by the Tier tab in the Appearances UI and wanting to collect all the old tier items (not necessarily full sets, though) that I like but haven’t gotten around to acquiring yet…

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the Falling Star and the Battle of the Exodar

With only three characters remaining, I decided to push them all through the Falling Star questline — get that mini-progression goal wrapped up — before having them continue on to level 102 and acquiring the rest of their Artifact weapons.

As I’ve taken more and more characters through the Battle of the Exodar, I’ve begun to imagine that what really happened was something like this:

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impostor syndrome

I haven’t listened to the Legion lead-in audiodrama that came out this week, but something in one of the BW posts about it made me wonder just what happened to Cordana Felsong, and why she’s going to be a dungeon boss in Legion. So I hopped over to Wowpedia to read up on her. Because Cordana is so closely associated with Khadgar, the article also provided a nice synopsis of the Legendary Ring questline.

Reading about what “the Commander” did made me feel even more like my characters are not really qualified to be the heads of their class Orders in Legion.

I only progressed in the Ring questline far enough to discover the fate of Kairoz in the Time-Lost Glade. Most of the things that “the Commander” is supposed to have done, I didn’t do.

I didn’t LFR during Warlords, not even running through them once in “tourist mode”. I made a choice not to bother with it at the beginning of the expansion, and I stuck with that decision. The only time I set foot in LFR this whole expansion was to get the Shipyard equipment blueprint for the Gyro-whatsit that drops from the Fel Reaver. On a Real Life basis, I don’t regret not raiding.

Sitting in my Garrison running Follower missions and doing profession CDs and farming old raids for Mog gear, though, I wasn’t “the Commander”, the great Hero of three worlds (counting Outland and Draenor separately)… I was more like the 2nd Lieutenant in charge of Logistics, or something.

And so I feel like my characters don’t quite deserve the accolades with which they will be greeted and treated as they undertake the Artifact questlines in Legion.

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time to start farming Dragon Soul…

When the method for obtaining an Emerald Drake to complete the set of mounts representing the five Classic/Aspect dragonflights was first announced, I was glad that a) no PvP would be required, b) I already had all but three of them, and c) the ones I didn’t have yet were from soloable places.

I promptly assigned my Draenei Mage to camp out at Onyxia’s Lair. I’d KO Onyxia every week for a few months, then get bored and leave her alone for a month or two.

I didn’t have a character whom I wanted to just leave camped out at the Nexus, so I only poked at Malygos occasionally (when I wanted something else that he dropped). I saw the Blue Drake — which I bought on the BMAH during Mists — drop, but not the Azure one.

Occasionally, I contemplated taking all my capable characters to Onyxia’s Lair and the Eye of Eternity… I’d get through two or three and then get tired of Malygos’s spiel and quit.

The Onyxian and Azure Drakes are drops from one-boss raids. The Blazing Drake, however, drops from the last boss of a long raid, and the penultimate boss of that particular raid is a real pain to do. So I didn’t even bother with that one at all.

I was getting pretty discouraged by never seeing the Onyxian Drake, feeling like by the time I managed to get the achievement, I’d be done with the game entirely and wouldn’t be able to enjoy having the green drake.

In the past couple of weeks, though, I’ve found myself wanting something to do until the Demon Invasions begin. So why not, I thought, go biff Ony and Maly with all my active alts?

The Azure Drake dropped for my Monk last week. The Onyxian Drake dropped for my Rogue this week.

Guess I’d better start farming Dragon Soul… Now, who to do it with? Probably the Rogue, for the Wrathion lore of the Fangs of the Father questline more than for the weapons themselves.

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cute is as K’ute does; done with the Shipyard

A minipost double-header!

~*~*~

During the past several months, I’ve been running Sunwell and Black Temple with a series of alts for a laundry list of items for Transmogrification. I’ve spent some time in the Battle of Mount Hyjal, too — not nearly as much, but enough that this happened a few weeks ago without me even having to try for it specifically:


Not sure she’s as cute as my kitten, though:

(if you’ll pardon the terrible Photoshopping of a low-quality selfie…)

~*~*~

The third Heirloom ring mission was for me also the last of the six special reward bearing rare Shipyard missions, so when it popped up last week (or thereabouts), I got an Achievement, too.

I said I’d keep playing the Shipyard until I got all three Heirloom rings, so I guess I’m done with it now. I dunno, there might be a Baleful token or two of which I haven’t got enough for all of my active alts quite yet.

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Tuesday night is (still) Raid Night

I haven’t danced to the guild raiding tune since mid-Cataclysm. In Mists, I tried to get my weekly LFRing done on Tuesday nights when the groups would be the best and freshest, but in Warlords, I haven’t even done that. And yet, my WoW routine still revolves around the weekly raid reset. These days, though, I’m “raiding” solo, smashing old raids with a rotating roster of alts farming for a grocery list of Transmogrification pieces.

Strikeouts indicate items I’ve obtained; brackets [] indicate things I want to do, eventually… after I cross a few more items off the rest of the list and maybe take a break from old raid farming for a while.

With the amount of time I have to play, getting through all of this takes me most of the week.

Karazhan is a grand old place with a wonderful ambiance… but I am so, so sick of it. I’ve been farming it with two characters for about four months now. Having decided that she needs to have Gorehowl on her back when she meets Grommash in Nagrand, my Warrior finally got it two weeks ago; the Armory tells me that it took her 16 Prince Malchezzar kills to do it. Meanwhile, my Priest has been trying to get the boots that match the T4 Priest set from Shade of Aran, and he kept dropping them for my Warrior instead and dropping the boots that match the T4 Warlock set for her.

Now that I’m running Sunwell on three characters a week — my Paladin has been running it for about two months now, but my Death Knight and Blood Elf Mage only started doing it a few weeks ago — I’ll probably be heartily sick of that place, too, pretty soon.

Update: I crossed Naxxramas off the list with both Ketura and Kaylynda tonight, but I’m still running Karazhan…

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