Plunderstorm P.S. — Polly Roger

I told my son that I was done playing Plunderstorm, but we were only one [Prize] Level away from getting the fancy pirate bird, and I thought he could get it all by himself if he kept playing Plunderstorm.
He kept playing, and he got it.
If he keeps playing Plunderstorm and manages to get us to Renown 40 by the end of the event, great! If he doesn’t, that’s just fine, too.

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ONE Pink Dragon!

One of my alts who’s been farming Valarjar Paragon chests got the Valarjar Stormwing this weekend.

Hooray! Now I have both Netherwing and Thorignir in my mount collection to correspond with the Netherwing and the Thorignir being welcomed into the Valdrakken Accord.

And now the question is, do I keep farming Heroic Dragon Soul with 5 alts each week to try to get the Experiment 12-B pink version of the old Drake flying mount model?

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Come Together, Right Now, Over Me

In the past week, I’ve pushed through the 10.2 MSQ and as many of the side-quests as interested me, so that I could get them done before changing my clothes for Winter Veil* 😉 I was a bit surprised, but glad, that the starter quest for the final chapter became available as soon as I’d accepted the quest to KO Fyrakk in the raid, instead of not becoming available until I’d completed the raid quest.

Although there are those among my blogroll who dislike the current WoW story (to put it mildly) — although there are certainly things the player is asked to do that are quite silly, and goofy plot holes, and occasionally nonsensical character development — overall, I have enjoyed it well enough.
* I appreciated how the Primalists and Qalashi remained relevant antagonists throughout the entirety of the Dragonflight main story — that they weren’t just discarded and forgotten after the leveling content and first raid, but were part of each patch and later raid, as well. I appreciated the follow-up of the Suffusion Camps in the use of suffused weaponry against the dragons in the Emerald Dream storyline. I liked how hearing Qalashi mooks in the first Qualashi stronghold we assault in the Waking Shores leveling questline calling “Igira, see me!” as they die was paid off by Igira awakening, being the yelling head for the Suffusion Camps, then becoming a boss in the Amirdrassil raid.
* I was glad to see that the Netherwing and Thorignir were not forgotten, and I enjoyed the questline in which Wrathion convinces Vyranoth to help him bring those smaller dragonflights to the Dragon Isles. Getting to punch Odyn in the face — seeing that nod by the story team to the community’s openly-expressed dislike of Odyn — and watching Vyranoth literally freeze him in his tracks was great! This is usually the point in the expansion where Kaelinda, who is Fire by default, goes Arcane just to do something different for awhile, but after interacting with Vyranoth, she’s thinking that this time, she will go Frost instead.
* I thought it was awesome to see all of Azeroth come together to defend Amirdrassil. All the faction leaders. All the friends — dracthyr, dragonspawn, centaur, tuskarr, niffen — that we’d made throughout the Dragon Isles.

*After all the silly quests of needing to solo things where I really ought to have gotten at least a squad of NPCs to help me, it was awesome to be more or less part of a raid group of Azeroth’s elites to take down the Prophet of the Flame.

* I loved seeing representatives of everyone who has been a part of this expansion’s story at the party after Amirdrassil blooms — including Big Kinook and Eragosa and Rumiastrasza doing the cooking, the Windtotem Tauren who settled in the Ohn’ahran Plains, the Ancients, the Wild Gods, all the different groups of Tuskarr, the Niffen — and old friends from all over Azeroth both geographically and historically — even a group from Ardenweald.
* I was relieved that Tyrande has found enough peace to let go of treating Kaelinda, a Blood Elf, with scorn and distrust because she is Horde, and instead treated her with respect and appreciation throughout the 10.2 storyline.

So for me, at least, the storytelling in this expansion has been better than Shadowlands, and more comfortable than Battle for Azeroth, and I am looking forward to the “epilogue” stories to come in Patch 10.2.5 and Patch 10.2.7.

~*~*~
* Kaelinda still needs to do the Azure Span leveling questline and the Blue Dragonflight Campaign questline at the Veiled Ossuary, but that will have to wait until January, I think

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baby steps into fractured time

Meet my Tauren Warlock!

There was not the crowd of new Warlocks I expected to find in Exile’s Reach on Tuesday night, but as a Warlock with a Voidwalker to tank for her, health funnel, and healthstone and/or drain life, she was able to take on that elite bear with ease and get the shoulders for the Expeditionary Cloth set.

I was rather delighted to discover a graphical update not mentioned in the 10.1.5 patch notes — or anywhere else that I’ve noticed, though I’ll grant that I may have missed coverage of it when Patch 10.1 went live — a Destruction Warlock’s pure fire spells (Immolate, Incinerate, Rain of Fire) now use the orange-magenta-violet Shadowflame effect introduced in Patch 10.1!

I’ll probably still get green fire for her eventually, but in the meantime, I appreciate the further differentiation of Destro Lock from Fire Mage
Mua ha ha HA HA!!! XD
~*~*~
Prompted by the Valdrakken Weekly, I did a few Time Rifts. They are moderately entertaining chaotic scrambles of mindlessly smashing things. I haven’t been to Eon’s Fringe yet; I decided that Kaelinda needed to do the Thaldraszus leveling questline first. At my level of play, I’ll have to wait until Patch 10.1.7 splits the new Mythic mega-dungeon Dawn of the Infinites into two Heroics to finish the Bronze Dragonflight storyline, anyway.

I would like to eventually collect all of the cloth Anachronistic set. I’d also like to eventually get the Rift-Mender’s Vestments accessory set from Soridormi reputation. Although I’m not much impressed with the Decorous Garments set as a whole, I’ll probably pick it up for the mix-and-match possibilities of the gloves, boots, and shoulders. I’m not going to go out and farm that stuff, however, until I’m done in Zaralek Cavern — I’m at Renown 13 with Loamm and would like to get to Renown 16 for the Ornate Black Dragon Labwear accessories.

With the Zaralek Cavern Campaign set representing the Black Dragonflight, the Patch 10.1 world drops set representing the Blue Dragonflight, the Fyrakk Assaults set representing the Red Dragonflight, and now the Time Rifts set representing the Bronze Dragonflight, I can’t help but wonder if the Dreamsurges coming in Patch 10.1.7 will finish out the collection with a Green Dragonflight coloration of that armor style.

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What I’m trying with my Patch 10.0 Talents and UI, for now

After a couple of hours (cumulative) of fiddling around with my UI and Talents, here’s what I’ve settled on for now. This might last for all of Dragonflight, or it might last only until next week. Click on the scaled images to see the full-size images.

Elemental Shaman

Balance Druid

Whenever Kaurinka manages to move on from Ardenweald, she’ll rearrange her talents to grab the Talent version of Convoke the Spirits. As long as she’s still there, however, the original Covenant version will be superior.

Fire Mage

Frost Mage

Arcane Mage

I’m happy to see Radiant Spark in the Mage Talent trees, but I would rather have had Mirrors of Torment in there, too, instead of Shifting Power.

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out with the last ten years’ Talent rows, in with the new-old Talent trees

As much for my own reference when choosing new Talents in the new trees as anything else, here are the talent layouts I’ve been running with my Mains in Shadowlands — but really more or less since… when was it? Cataclysm? Mists of Pandaria?… the time when the three-talent rows were first introduced.

Elemental Shaman

Restoration Shaman

Balance Druid

Fire Mage

Frost Mage

Arcane Mage

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Arkelios’ Solace: Are you Safe or Speedy?

When you’ve finished picking up Arkelios’ foci, which path do you take back up? The safer, but longer, path over the bridge (marked in green) — or the shorter, but more dangerous, path up the root (marked in red)?
I usually take the root — but I’ve learned that I have to be on a fairly small mount to be able to judge the turns correctly. Even the Wildseed Cradle is a little too wide — I almost always fall off the root when I try to use that mount!

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“This looks like Tauren country”

After school was over for the year, BTH took a week of vacation and we went to see some national parks that are within reasonable driving distance from home, considering our small children. We checked out a suitable number of volumes of the How to Train Your Dragon series on audiobook CDs to listen to during the drivetime; of our local public library’s selection of audiobooks for kids, these were the books I thought would be most enjoyed by both the kids — our five year-old loved them! — and the parents.
The Barrens:

Thousand Needles:



Stonetalon Mountains:


I didn’t get any pictures of the grasslands on the interior of the top of the plateau, as I would have had to take them out the window of the moving car, but they put me in mind of Mulgore.

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Kaelinda and Salandria’s Marvelous Adventure

A story in screenshots. See also Kaprikka and Dornaa’s marvelous adventure
~*~*~

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Kalaneia and the Blade of the Primus

For all that she detested the physical environment of Maldraxxus, by the time she had completed the restoration of the Blade of the Primus and opened the door to the Seat of the Primus, Kalaneia knew that the Necrolords were the Covenant where she belonged.
Also, WTB cosmetic Blade of the Primus that can be Mogged over any and all weapon types.

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