The following is from the New Year's report which Wild produces each year:
On the 4th of January, 2008, the "Grunt Foundation" became a reality, led by the undead priest Phillyperdue, french for "lost girl." It was the start of a grand vision for five players who got together just twice a week and intentionally leveled at the same pace. It was an incredible, glorious effort with the goal of seeing and doing everything together that WoW had to offer. The tiny guild cleared Ragefire Chasm, Wailing Caverns, Shadowfang Keep, Blackfathom Deeps, Razorfen Kraul, and all wings of the Scarlet Monastery. But the concept proved too frail. After one member slipped away over time, it all ended on 9 Apr when two of the four remaining members decided it was time to hang up their gear. Philly and Kon, the last of the guild, would quest together for several more weeks, but it just wasn't the same, and ultimately, we too ended it. Kon took over the guild leadership of the Grunt Foundation, and the last I heard he was still active and a level 53 on the Scryer's server. Arq and Huld are still officially members, but have never returned to the game. Braeco no longer exists.
Postnote - As for Philly? Well, she has her own story to tell.
Monday, October 12, 2009
2008-04-09 Wayfarer's Rest
It was early Sunday morning. Jovia dusted a few tables and made sure there was plenty of ale behind the counter. She considered sweeping the floor again, but knew she was just killing time.
Soon, perhaps this morning, perhaps the next, a fresh faced but confident young lad or lass will come calling with a bit of leatherskin to present. And it will begin again.
Jovia wept.
Soon, perhaps this morning, perhaps the next, a fresh faced but confident young lad or lass will come calling with a bit of leatherskin to present. And it will begin again.
Jovia wept.
2008-04-09 Fatal Fracture
The below post was waiting for Philly when she logged on for the Tuesday night Grunt Foundation run.
From Huld: "Folks, I don't want to go into a lot of details, but due to real life issues wherein I'm voluntarily limiting my time spent in World of Warcraft, I won't be able to continue with the Grunt Foundation. I've had a lot of fun, and I'm sorry that I've been flakey at times. This in no way reflects on you (you being Kon and Philly); the times we've run around together have always been fun. I was asked to pass on for Arq as well that he will be giving up his spot in the GF also, and asked that I let you guys know that he's had a great time and hopes things work out if you decide to continue the characters."
Philly penned the following as she waited for Kon, who probably has not seen this post yet.
From Philly: "I had a lot of fun with you guys, that's for sure. We made quite a lot of progress in a relatively short time considering that we only played twice a week. Gotta love four manning SM Cathedral!
Hope your situation works out for you, Huld. I'm sure you are doing what's best and that of course is the most important thing. Best of luck to you and to Arq as well. My only regret is that I can't make you green with envy by riding circles around you two on Philly's new Skeletal Horse!
Just joking, of course. I'll miss you both. Again, good luck in whatever you do."
As for our little experiment, it may be that those of us in our situation are just not going to have the time to play even on a limited basis like this. I'll talk it over with Kon when he comes on and we'll see what we want to do. For some reason the movie "The Wild Bunch" comes to mind. It was fun while it lasted, though. "
I wrote the below account of our sunday GF run yesterday, before knowing the above. The only thing I changed was adding the comment after the title. The GF is no more.
Scarlet Monastery Again - The Last Hurrah for the Grunt Foundation
Part 2 of sunday's GF run - After a short discussion the four of us agreed that the morning's task would be the Scarlet Monastery once again. This time we were headed into the Cathedral, the toughest wing of SM. We didn't bother to look for a 5th, agreeing without saying a word that we would do it with four.
The Cathedral is one big pile of trash mobs with three Bosses at it's end. Mobs are scattered throughout the open ground areas, fill corridors, and are tucked away in every corner of the place. Groups were generally pulled in packs of three, so Arq and Huld would tank one each and Kon would have his succubus Seduce the third. Some of these mobs had an AoE attack that hit everyone in range for considerable damage, and Philly used Prayer of Mending (PoM) many times this fight. PoM heals everyone in the raid at once. It's costly to cast, but great when everyone is taking damage. We learned the hard way that at least kon and Philly could stand far enough away not to get hit by that AoE. An overpull with two of those AoE mobs caused the only full wipe we had on the trash.
It just took a lot of time to finally get all of the trash mobs cleared. Our first Boss target, High Inquisitor Fairbanks, had to be quaking in his boots. He hides in the Chapel, and can only be accessed by pulling a secret lever in the form of a torch. Some interesting lore about him, as he witnessed Mograine's son kill his High Lord father in cold blood, with his father's own sword no less, the famous Ashbringer. Not so interesting was the fight, which we easily won, or the loot, which was a "green" pair of leather bracers. Kon won the greed roll, and he said it for all of us: Leather - Yuk!
The main event for SM Cathedral is the battle with Scarlet Commander Mograine (the son) and High Inquisitor Whitemane, the fanatical priestess who runs the Monastery. Every mob in the area has to be dead, or they will join in the defense of Mograine when the fight starts.
Mograine stands alone. We engage. It's a relatively short fight and Mograine falls. Upon his death a chamber behind Morgraine opens and Whitemane engages. The fight is going well when she Sleeps Philly, cutting off the healing. Philly looks around helplessly and realizes that everyone else has been Slept and well. As we watch Whitemane resurrects Mograine and brings him back to full health before the spell wears off. Now we have to fight them both together.
Philly picked up the healing as damage was focused on bringing down Whitemane. Once she finally fell Mograine followed her shortly afterward (for the 2nd time).
Mail Leggings dropped from Mograine that the pally, Arq, won. Whitemane dropped [Whitemane's Chapeau], an oh so nice helmet. Philly won the roll over Kon.
Philly, Kon, and Huld had also finished the last major quest in SM - but Arq still needed to run the Armory and kill Herod. So we headed over to the Armory and just blew through it in about 30 minutes. Herod also dropped the Leggings, so Huld got a pair as well. A trash mob dropped the [Tabard of the Scarlet Monestary], a rare item that, well, doesn't do anything, but is kind of cool.
So another dungeon has now fallen. It has taken a lot longer to wrap up SM than it has any previous dungeon. Where will we go from here?
Philly knew where she was headed. In the short term, anyway. To Brill, the tiny town ouside the Undercity where Philly "grew up." There is a Stables there, and riding trainers, and lovely, lovely Undead Skeletal Horses. A lot of work went into earning that 85 gold, but it was very easy for Philly to turn it over, and then walk out of the Stables leading her new mount. Hi Ho, Giddyup!
PS - Philly and Kon decided to keep our tuesday and sunday game days and see how things go. We'll see if we can get others to join us. The two of us had our own adventures tuesday night which I'll get to in another post.
So we will continue. It won't be without a certain amount of sadness, though. I had such high hopes for this group.
From Huld: "Folks, I don't want to go into a lot of details, but due to real life issues wherein I'm voluntarily limiting my time spent in World of Warcraft, I won't be able to continue with the Grunt Foundation. I've had a lot of fun, and I'm sorry that I've been flakey at times. This in no way reflects on you (you being Kon and Philly); the times we've run around together have always been fun. I was asked to pass on for Arq as well that he will be giving up his spot in the GF also, and asked that I let you guys know that he's had a great time and hopes things work out if you decide to continue the characters."
Philly penned the following as she waited for Kon, who probably has not seen this post yet.
From Philly: "I had a lot of fun with you guys, that's for sure. We made quite a lot of progress in a relatively short time considering that we only played twice a week. Gotta love four manning SM Cathedral!
Hope your situation works out for you, Huld. I'm sure you are doing what's best and that of course is the most important thing. Best of luck to you and to Arq as well. My only regret is that I can't make you green with envy by riding circles around you two on Philly's new Skeletal Horse!
Just joking, of course. I'll miss you both. Again, good luck in whatever you do."
As for our little experiment, it may be that those of us in our situation are just not going to have the time to play even on a limited basis like this. I'll talk it over with Kon when he comes on and we'll see what we want to do. For some reason the movie "The Wild Bunch" comes to mind. It was fun while it lasted, though. "
I wrote the below account of our sunday GF run yesterday, before knowing the above. The only thing I changed was adding the comment after the title. The GF is no more.
Scarlet Monastery Again - The Last Hurrah for the Grunt Foundation
Part 2 of sunday's GF run - After a short discussion the four of us agreed that the morning's task would be the Scarlet Monastery once again. This time we were headed into the Cathedral, the toughest wing of SM. We didn't bother to look for a 5th, agreeing without saying a word that we would do it with four.
The Cathedral is one big pile of trash mobs with three Bosses at it's end. Mobs are scattered throughout the open ground areas, fill corridors, and are tucked away in every corner of the place. Groups were generally pulled in packs of three, so Arq and Huld would tank one each and Kon would have his succubus Seduce the third. Some of these mobs had an AoE attack that hit everyone in range for considerable damage, and Philly used Prayer of Mending (PoM) many times this fight. PoM heals everyone in the raid at once. It's costly to cast, but great when everyone is taking damage. We learned the hard way that at least kon and Philly could stand far enough away not to get hit by that AoE. An overpull with two of those AoE mobs caused the only full wipe we had on the trash.
It just took a lot of time to finally get all of the trash mobs cleared. Our first Boss target, High Inquisitor Fairbanks, had to be quaking in his boots. He hides in the Chapel, and can only be accessed by pulling a secret lever in the form of a torch. Some interesting lore about him, as he witnessed Mograine's son kill his High Lord father in cold blood, with his father's own sword no less, the famous Ashbringer. Not so interesting was the fight, which we easily won, or the loot, which was a "green" pair of leather bracers. Kon won the greed roll, and he said it for all of us: Leather - Yuk!
The main event for SM Cathedral is the battle with Scarlet Commander Mograine (the son) and High Inquisitor Whitemane, the fanatical priestess who runs the Monastery. Every mob in the area has to be dead, or they will join in the defense of Mograine when the fight starts.
Mograine stands alone. We engage. It's a relatively short fight and Mograine falls. Upon his death a chamber behind Morgraine opens and Whitemane engages. The fight is going well when she Sleeps Philly, cutting off the healing. Philly looks around helplessly and realizes that everyone else has been Slept and well. As we watch Whitemane resurrects Mograine and brings him back to full health before the spell wears off. Now we have to fight them both together.
Philly picked up the healing as damage was focused on bringing down Whitemane. Once she finally fell Mograine followed her shortly afterward (for the 2nd time).
Mail Leggings dropped from Mograine that the pally, Arq, won. Whitemane dropped [Whitemane's Chapeau], an oh so nice helmet. Philly won the roll over Kon.
Philly, Kon, and Huld had also finished the last major quest in SM - but Arq still needed to run the Armory and kill Herod. So we headed over to the Armory and just blew through it in about 30 minutes. Herod also dropped the Leggings, so Huld got a pair as well. A trash mob dropped the [Tabard of the Scarlet Monestary], a rare item that, well, doesn't do anything, but is kind of cool.
So another dungeon has now fallen. It has taken a lot longer to wrap up SM than it has any previous dungeon. Where will we go from here?
Philly knew where she was headed. In the short term, anyway. To Brill, the tiny town ouside the Undercity where Philly "grew up." There is a Stables there, and riding trainers, and lovely, lovely Undead Skeletal Horses. A lot of work went into earning that 85 gold, but it was very easy for Philly to turn it over, and then walk out of the Stables leading her new mount. Hi Ho, Giddyup!
PS - Philly and Kon decided to keep our tuesday and sunday game days and see how things go. We'll see if we can get others to join us. The two of us had our own adventures tuesday night which I'll get to in another post.
So we will continue. It won't be without a certain amount of sadness, though. I had such high hopes for this group.
2008-04-02 New Time, Better Attendance?
Tuesday night is Grunt Foundation night with our new 6pm server start time. Philly logged in around 5:40pm to visit the priest trainer for upgraded spells as she hadn't made it over there since reaching level 38. The warlock Kon arrived about five minutes later. Huld showed up right at 6pm and now all we needed was Arq.
At 6:20pm, still no Arq, and Huld gets a phone call.
At 6:40pm, Huld is still gone, and still no Arq.
At 7pm Huld times out and disconnects without ever coming back.
I'm thinking I could be in Tempest Keep right now, which is where Wild's guild was headed tonight.
Kon and Philly, once again on our own, hooked up with another group doing the Scarlet Monastery Armory. Philly has done both the Graveyard and the Library wings in SM. All that is left is the Armory and Cathedral. If we had time the group intended to do both those wings.
The Armory has just one boss, Herod, so we decided to start there. The group included a DPS warrior who did not want to tank, a resto druid who wanted to be main healer (how about that?), and a tanking warrior who had horrible connection problems and only actually participated in about half the fights. Highest level player was the tank at level 41.
Overall it was a fun group, and they played well. Only a couple of times did we over-aggro mobs and things got a little exciting, but the druid was a good healer and Philly rarely needed to back up heal. So Philly was pretty much in full shadow priest mode for this run as a ranged DPSer.
The fight with the boss, Herod, was a bit anti-climactic. He is in the center at the bottom of a tall room with a winding stair that leads down to him. The two warriors tanked him where he stood while the rest of us stayed at the top of the stairs. It was an easy tank and spank and a warrior helm dropped.
I don't understand why we had trouble with the Armory when the GF first tried it. A pretty straightforward fight.
We had fun, though, and there was a little hilarity even before the run started when a player outside the group started flirting with Kon, who plays a female blood elf. I told him to just roll with it, but he was too embarrassed. I teased him about using his "charms" to get people to join our group (both groups we have put together have been pretty good). Must be the female alt thing, he said. Yea, but nobody hits on me, I told him. Then again, Philly is just skin and bones, and more bone than skin.
Both warriors had to leave after we finished the Armory, so we called it a night. Philly hung around to do some herb and fish farming. Level 40 is getting close and Philly needs to make enough gold to be able to buy a mount when she gets there. Philly has 67 gold, but needs 85 gold to buy the mount and the training required.
At 6:20pm, still no Arq, and Huld gets a phone call.
At 6:40pm, Huld is still gone, and still no Arq.
At 7pm Huld times out and disconnects without ever coming back.
I'm thinking I could be in Tempest Keep right now, which is where Wild's guild was headed tonight.
Kon and Philly, once again on our own, hooked up with another group doing the Scarlet Monastery Armory. Philly has done both the Graveyard and the Library wings in SM. All that is left is the Armory and Cathedral. If we had time the group intended to do both those wings.
The Armory has just one boss, Herod, so we decided to start there. The group included a DPS warrior who did not want to tank, a resto druid who wanted to be main healer (how about that?), and a tanking warrior who had horrible connection problems and only actually participated in about half the fights. Highest level player was the tank at level 41.
Overall it was a fun group, and they played well. Only a couple of times did we over-aggro mobs and things got a little exciting, but the druid was a good healer and Philly rarely needed to back up heal. So Philly was pretty much in full shadow priest mode for this run as a ranged DPSer.
The fight with the boss, Herod, was a bit anti-climactic. He is in the center at the bottom of a tall room with a winding stair that leads down to him. The two warriors tanked him where he stood while the rest of us stayed at the top of the stairs. It was an easy tank and spank and a warrior helm dropped.
I don't understand why we had trouble with the Armory when the GF first tried it. A pretty straightforward fight.
We had fun, though, and there was a little hilarity even before the run started when a player outside the group started flirting with Kon, who plays a female blood elf. I told him to just roll with it, but he was too embarrassed. I teased him about using his "charms" to get people to join our group (both groups we have put together have been pretty good). Must be the female alt thing, he said. Yea, but nobody hits on me, I told him. Then again, Philly is just skin and bones, and more bone than skin.
Both warriors had to leave after we finished the Armory, so we called it a night. Philly hung around to do some herb and fish farming. Level 40 is getting close and Philly needs to make enough gold to be able to buy a mount when she gets there. Philly has 67 gold, but needs 85 gold to buy the mount and the training required.
2008-03-28 A Last Hurrah for Scarlet Monastery?
The Grunt Foundation hasn't had a get together since . . . well, I can't remember, and I'm concerned that our group is going to slowly disintegrate and fade away. After the patch wiped out our tuesday run this week, Arq and Huld asked if we could resked for thursday. I said I would try, but at the time I was unable to commit for certain.
On Thursday Philly logged in around 5:20pm (GF's usual start time is 5:30pm). Kon logged in a few minutes later. He was ready to play. I posted another message on the GF website letting Arq and Huld know we were in game and hoping they were going to check in. I took a quick afk to eat dinner with the Mrs and was back at 5:45pm. Kon said no one had checked in.
A little after 6pm there was still no sign of Arq or Huld, and it was looking more and more like they had decided we weren't going to run. Kon invited Philly to group, and when I accepted saw that there were two others in the group as well, a level 35 mage and a level 44 hunter.
Wanna do SM Lib anyway? Kon asked. Kon needed a book in the Scarlet Monastery Library wing to get the hot wand that Philly was already using.
Hmm, well, we would need a tank, I suggested in guild chat, not party chat.
The hunter opened a LFG request looking for a healer. A healer? The hunter then declared in party chat that he would tank. And that we really didn't need five, we had enough with the four we had. The hunter then said it would be his pet that would tank. Marginally better. What kind of pet? A cat. Sigh. A cat pet does nice DPS, but it's definitely not a tanking pet.
Philly hadn't decided whether to get in on this. I sent back to Kon on guild chat: I want to help you get your wand, but I'm not really sure I want to do SM Lib with four and with a hunter and his armorless cat playing tank. Kon agreed that it was a risk and understood, but I was pretty sure he was going to stick around and try to get this done.
Well, I figured, if this was a complete disaster, at least I tried to help. Or, if we could at least handle the trash mobs, then we could probably get far enough in for Kon to get his book. So Philly allowed herself to be talked into this crazy scheme.
Once in the instance there was immediate friction between the hunter and the mage. The hunter was a know it all, I have five 70s kind of player. I have to admit he was pretty good, and that he was practically a twink with the gear he was wearing. Well, maybe this guy really can tank this instance. The idea of marking targets was a waste of time, according to the hunter. He did ask the mage to "tell me if you are going to sheep something." The mage laughed and said no. Oh boy.
As we worked through the initial trash it became obvious that we had the fire power (warlock, lock pet, hunter, hunter pet, mage) to bring down anything. And with the pets taking a lot of the up front damage and Philly healing in between adding wand damage, this started to look like it would actually work.
We got to the hunter boss and his three hyena defenders. Did we set targets, crowd control stuff, focused fire, or have any kind of a plan? Naw, that was too much trouble. The hunter waded in like they were just more trash mobs. Good thing Philly is a pretty decent healer. Philly kept all that fire power alive, popping Shield on both mage and warlock at times, and sheer overwhelming DPS brought the hyenas and the boss down. The gloves dropped, and there was no leather wearer to take best advantage of them. The hunter took them as the only person who could remotely do anything with them.
We blasted through more trash. The hunter wasn't completely out of control, and we managed to handle everything we aggroed. We killed right past where Kon was to get his book, and I couldn't quite remember where it was. We won't leave until you get it, I promised Kon. We kept pushing forward as the clock kept ticking past 6:30pm and toward 7pm. We got to the final boss. By this time I knew that the boss, Doan, had no chance. We crushed him. He always drops [Illusionary Staff] and a nice cloth shoulder. The mage and hunter didn't need either. Philly wanted the staff and already had better shoulder gear. kon needed the shoulders. How perfect was that? Philly got a new staff and Kon got a shoulder slot upgrade.
And of course, just as happened with our own group in the Library some weeks ago, the hunter headed back the other way so we could find the book and aggroed a whole room full of respawned mobs. It was as wild a battle as any Philly has been in. SM humanoids and their hyena pets were everywhere. Iced mobs, sheeped mobs, Shielded squishies, pets tanking, arrows flying, lancing arcs of spells and wand blasts filling the air. And when the crackle of energized air and the cries of battle faded we were all still standing.
Kon found his book, and went to get his wand reward. Philly was 97% of the way to level 37. Philly thanked Kon "for getting me into this," which brought a laugh from Kon. It was a crazy run, but it was fun. The specter of missing guildies, though, put a darker light on the hopes of the Grunt Foundation.
On Thursday Philly logged in around 5:20pm (GF's usual start time is 5:30pm). Kon logged in a few minutes later. He was ready to play. I posted another message on the GF website letting Arq and Huld know we were in game and hoping they were going to check in. I took a quick afk to eat dinner with the Mrs and was back at 5:45pm. Kon said no one had checked in.
A little after 6pm there was still no sign of Arq or Huld, and it was looking more and more like they had decided we weren't going to run. Kon invited Philly to group, and when I accepted saw that there were two others in the group as well, a level 35 mage and a level 44 hunter.
Wanna do SM Lib anyway? Kon asked. Kon needed a book in the Scarlet Monastery Library wing to get the hot wand that Philly was already using.
Hmm, well, we would need a tank, I suggested in guild chat, not party chat.
The hunter opened a LFG request looking for a healer. A healer? The hunter then declared in party chat that he would tank. And that we really didn't need five, we had enough with the four we had. The hunter then said it would be his pet that would tank. Marginally better. What kind of pet? A cat. Sigh. A cat pet does nice DPS, but it's definitely not a tanking pet.
Philly hadn't decided whether to get in on this. I sent back to Kon on guild chat: I want to help you get your wand, but I'm not really sure I want to do SM Lib with four and with a hunter and his armorless cat playing tank. Kon agreed that it was a risk and understood, but I was pretty sure he was going to stick around and try to get this done.
Well, I figured, if this was a complete disaster, at least I tried to help. Or, if we could at least handle the trash mobs, then we could probably get far enough in for Kon to get his book. So Philly allowed herself to be talked into this crazy scheme.
Once in the instance there was immediate friction between the hunter and the mage. The hunter was a know it all, I have five 70s kind of player. I have to admit he was pretty good, and that he was practically a twink with the gear he was wearing. Well, maybe this guy really can tank this instance. The idea of marking targets was a waste of time, according to the hunter. He did ask the mage to "tell me if you are going to sheep something." The mage laughed and said no. Oh boy.
As we worked through the initial trash it became obvious that we had the fire power (warlock, lock pet, hunter, hunter pet, mage) to bring down anything. And with the pets taking a lot of the up front damage and Philly healing in between adding wand damage, this started to look like it would actually work.
We got to the hunter boss and his three hyena defenders. Did we set targets, crowd control stuff, focused fire, or have any kind of a plan? Naw, that was too much trouble. The hunter waded in like they were just more trash mobs. Good thing Philly is a pretty decent healer. Philly kept all that fire power alive, popping Shield on both mage and warlock at times, and sheer overwhelming DPS brought the hyenas and the boss down. The gloves dropped, and there was no leather wearer to take best advantage of them. The hunter took them as the only person who could remotely do anything with them.
We blasted through more trash. The hunter wasn't completely out of control, and we managed to handle everything we aggroed. We killed right past where Kon was to get his book, and I couldn't quite remember where it was. We won't leave until you get it, I promised Kon. We kept pushing forward as the clock kept ticking past 6:30pm and toward 7pm. We got to the final boss. By this time I knew that the boss, Doan, had no chance. We crushed him. He always drops [Illusionary Staff] and a nice cloth shoulder. The mage and hunter didn't need either. Philly wanted the staff and already had better shoulder gear. kon needed the shoulders. How perfect was that? Philly got a new staff and Kon got a shoulder slot upgrade.
And of course, just as happened with our own group in the Library some weeks ago, the hunter headed back the other way so we could find the book and aggroed a whole room full of respawned mobs. It was as wild a battle as any Philly has been in. SM humanoids and their hyena pets were everywhere. Iced mobs, sheeped mobs, Shielded squishies, pets tanking, arrows flying, lancing arcs of spells and wand blasts filling the air. And when the crackle of energized air and the cries of battle faded we were all still standing.
Kon found his book, and went to get his wand reward. Philly was 97% of the way to level 37. Philly thanked Kon "for getting me into this," which brought a laugh from Kon. It was a crazy run, but it was fun. The specter of missing guildies, though, put a darker light on the hopes of the Grunt Foundation.
2008-03-18 Missing Guildies
The Grunt Foundation is going through a rocky period which started with one member bowing out semi-permanently due to changing work schedules. Since then getting the remaining four together for the twice weekly adventures has been getting harder and harder to accommodate. Having two of the four fail to show last sunday with no notice or explanation is troubling. More troubling still is that despite a website post from Philly asking Huld and Kon to let us know what the situation is, there has been no response. Neither have been in game for several days. This grand experiment may be in jeopardy.
Addendum to my Grunt Foundation report - The GF world is righting itself as both Huld and Kon have surfaced. Our warrior again slept through a sunday morning, and is having some guild issues on his other toons. I suggested we could consider starting a little later in the morning if that would help. Kon also reported back after sending him an email. He has been occupied with a lady friend (who can argue with that?) who has been visiting for a few days. He, too, is now available. So, real life intervened for a bit, but hopefully WoW is now re-inserting itself.
Addendum to my Grunt Foundation report - The GF world is righting itself as both Huld and Kon have surfaced. Our warrior again slept through a sunday morning, and is having some guild issues on his other toons. I suggested we could consider starting a little later in the morning if that would help. Kon also reported back after sending him an email. He has been occupied with a lady friend (who can argue with that?) who has been visiting for a few days. He, too, is now available. So, real life intervened for a bit, but hopefully WoW is now re-inserting itself.
2008-03-11 Stubbornly Pursuing Scarlet Monastery
On Sunday morning Philly managed to remember to set the clock forward and was in game on time. Arq, who lives in AZ and doesn't have to change to Daylight Savings, was already in game. The other two showed up an hour later, victims of the time change. We would still need a fifth player for our Scarlet Monastery Library run.
Philly was ready with the Test of Lore quest to go after the book I'd missed out on last time in order to get the new wand reward. Arq had time to get to the same point as Philly on the quest chain and would also be after the book. Kon was also on that quest chain but did not get far enough along. As far as a fifth player went, the player that had helped the GF out in RFK the last time was on, but there was also a level 32 mage looking for an SM Library group. We invited the mage to help with crowd control.
With five of us, the SM LIbrary was a lot easier this time. The mobs still hit hard, but with the mage to sleep and the lock to seduce we were able to control the mob packs and bring them down one by one. The first boss, the hunter Loksey and his triplet of hounds, gave us a good fight. The warrior tanked Loksey and the pally held the three hounds. It was a bit challenging to heal them both, as they took some serious damage, but we got them down. The training gloves dropped - leather, which no one could use. The mage was an enchanter so he DEed the blue gloves and also won the roll for the shard.
We worked our way through the trash to the small room off the Library and both Philly and Arq got our quest book. That was a lot easier than last week. Several mob groups later we were facing Arcanist Doan, the second and final boss in the SM Library wiing. He can be a bit tricky because he can Silence healers, and in fact stopped Philly's healing several times during the course of the fight. But I made sure that both the tank and the pally had renews ticking at all times, and between the two of them and the mage/warlock spell damage barrage he went down. Doan has four blues he can drop, and usually drops two of them. Philly was hoping for the robe and the Illusionary rod, but we got the dagger and shoulders instead. Philly could have used the dagger for soloing, but Kon needed it and I passed to him. We sharded the shoulders.
Even starting an hour late, we finished the Library so fast we decided to give the SM Armory a try. The mage was up for it and we all had the time, so we hearthed out to repair and then reassembled at the Summoning Stone.
The Armory is a locked instance requiring a key from the Library, which we all got from a box behind Arcanist Doan. Sometimes players forget to collect that key after killing Doan, and have to do the wing all over again. The Armory instance portal is just inside the locked door. Once inside, there are guards just out of aggro range. We buffed up and got ready, then took out the guards. From there is another courtyard like the one in the Library. The mobs are generally a level higher in here than in the Library, but there didn't seem to be as many of them, at least in the courtyard. We cleared it and moved deeper in. Next was a series of corridors and stairs. We did fine until we over-pulled an area out of view at the top of a set of stairs. Philly had another oops as we wiped and I was without a soulstone. Again. Sigh.
We didn't give the mobs a chance to respawn this time as we rezzed and got back inside quickly. Philly got a new soulstone. The second pull went well, bringing three mobs, two of which were cc'ed. We killed two and Philly had switched to wand to finish off the third when more mobs descended on us. "WTF? " came over chat from someone. We responded to the new attack by getting one of them sheeped and getting Arq and Huld on the other two, and then more mobs joined the fight. "What's with your succubus, kon?" The pally asked. The succubus seemingly decided on its own to head deeper into the corridor at the top of the stairs, and was bringing all kinds of new neighbors down to meet us.
It was a heck of a fight, I'll give us that. Not sure how many we killed, but you couldn't see the top of the stairs for all the bodies we had laid out up there. We lost the mage, and then the warrior, and the pally had too many on his hands to keep them all away from Philly. I topped off the pally and then concentrated on trying to stay alive while backing Philly down the stairs and to a quiet corner, where Philly eventually died. It was another wipe. But I had a soulstone this time. Philly rezzed safely, and I began rezzing the rest of the group. Everyone was up but the warrior, who needed a brief AFK. Then Kon died. WTF?
Arq and I went after him, wondering where he had wandered off to. I know I had rezzed him, but he was already on his way back into the instance and decided to just run back. He ran into respawns in the courtyard. We tried to get to him, but more mobs were starting to materialize between him and us. We backed off, while the mage, wondering where we all were, came running in from the other direction - and aggroed mobs on the other side of us. Cornered, we fought to the last. But every time we'd kill one a new one seemed to spawn. When Philly went down I was about out of mana anyway. Still, I couldn't help but add to chat, "Dam squishy priests." Kon actually got back into the fight, and prolonged the fight a bit, but when he went down Arq still had three on him, and they finally overwhelmed him. Huld came back from his afk, and seeing everyone "still" dead, was like, what have ya'll been doing?
We called it a morning.
It was still a successful venture, clearing the SM LIbrary and getting some practice in the Armory. Philly finished off the last three steps in the Test of Lore quest chain and collected his nice new fire wand from the npc in far Thousand Needles. Oh yes, and Huld ended up with the helm Philly had been carrying around for a week. And Philly made level 35.
Philly won't be on next tuesday as I'll be working off site for three days, tuesday through thursday.
Philly was ready with the Test of Lore quest to go after the book I'd missed out on last time in order to get the new wand reward. Arq had time to get to the same point as Philly on the quest chain and would also be after the book. Kon was also on that quest chain but did not get far enough along. As far as a fifth player went, the player that had helped the GF out in RFK the last time was on, but there was also a level 32 mage looking for an SM Library group. We invited the mage to help with crowd control.
With five of us, the SM LIbrary was a lot easier this time. The mobs still hit hard, but with the mage to sleep and the lock to seduce we were able to control the mob packs and bring them down one by one. The first boss, the hunter Loksey and his triplet of hounds, gave us a good fight. The warrior tanked Loksey and the pally held the three hounds. It was a bit challenging to heal them both, as they took some serious damage, but we got them down. The training gloves dropped - leather, which no one could use. The mage was an enchanter so he DEed the blue gloves and also won the roll for the shard.
We worked our way through the trash to the small room off the Library and both Philly and Arq got our quest book. That was a lot easier than last week. Several mob groups later we were facing Arcanist Doan, the second and final boss in the SM Library wiing. He can be a bit tricky because he can Silence healers, and in fact stopped Philly's healing several times during the course of the fight. But I made sure that both the tank and the pally had renews ticking at all times, and between the two of them and the mage/warlock spell damage barrage he went down. Doan has four blues he can drop, and usually drops two of them. Philly was hoping for the robe and the Illusionary rod, but we got the dagger and shoulders instead. Philly could have used the dagger for soloing, but Kon needed it and I passed to him. We sharded the shoulders.
Even starting an hour late, we finished the Library so fast we decided to give the SM Armory a try. The mage was up for it and we all had the time, so we hearthed out to repair and then reassembled at the Summoning Stone.
The Armory is a locked instance requiring a key from the Library, which we all got from a box behind Arcanist Doan. Sometimes players forget to collect that key after killing Doan, and have to do the wing all over again. The Armory instance portal is just inside the locked door. Once inside, there are guards just out of aggro range. We buffed up and got ready, then took out the guards. From there is another courtyard like the one in the Library. The mobs are generally a level higher in here than in the Library, but there didn't seem to be as many of them, at least in the courtyard. We cleared it and moved deeper in. Next was a series of corridors and stairs. We did fine until we over-pulled an area out of view at the top of a set of stairs. Philly had another oops as we wiped and I was without a soulstone. Again. Sigh.
We didn't give the mobs a chance to respawn this time as we rezzed and got back inside quickly. Philly got a new soulstone. The second pull went well, bringing three mobs, two of which were cc'ed. We killed two and Philly had switched to wand to finish off the third when more mobs descended on us. "WTF? " came over chat from someone. We responded to the new attack by getting one of them sheeped and getting Arq and Huld on the other two, and then more mobs joined the fight. "What's with your succubus, kon?" The pally asked. The succubus seemingly decided on its own to head deeper into the corridor at the top of the stairs, and was bringing all kinds of new neighbors down to meet us.
It was a heck of a fight, I'll give us that. Not sure how many we killed, but you couldn't see the top of the stairs for all the bodies we had laid out up there. We lost the mage, and then the warrior, and the pally had too many on his hands to keep them all away from Philly. I topped off the pally and then concentrated on trying to stay alive while backing Philly down the stairs and to a quiet corner, where Philly eventually died. It was another wipe. But I had a soulstone this time. Philly rezzed safely, and I began rezzing the rest of the group. Everyone was up but the warrior, who needed a brief AFK. Then Kon died. WTF?
Arq and I went after him, wondering where he had wandered off to. I know I had rezzed him, but he was already on his way back into the instance and decided to just run back. He ran into respawns in the courtyard. We tried to get to him, but more mobs were starting to materialize between him and us. We backed off, while the mage, wondering where we all were, came running in from the other direction - and aggroed mobs on the other side of us. Cornered, we fought to the last. But every time we'd kill one a new one seemed to spawn. When Philly went down I was about out of mana anyway. Still, I couldn't help but add to chat, "Dam squishy priests." Kon actually got back into the fight, and prolonged the fight a bit, but when he went down Arq still had three on him, and they finally overwhelmed him. Huld came back from his afk, and seeing everyone "still" dead, was like, what have ya'll been doing?
We called it a morning.
It was still a successful venture, clearing the SM LIbrary and getting some practice in the Armory. Philly finished off the last three steps in the Test of Lore quest chain and collected his nice new fire wand from the npc in far Thousand Needles. Oh yes, and Huld ended up with the helm Philly had been carrying around for a week. And Philly made level 35.
Philly won't be on next tuesday as I'll be working off site for three days, tuesday through thursday.
2008-03-06 Scarlet Monastery Tests GF
Philly and Arq were the first to reach the Summoning Stone outside Scarlet Monastery for our Tuesday night GF get together. We Summoned the warlock Kon and the warrior Huldu as they got in game. The mage, Braeco, was a no show.
The four of us tried to find a fifth to round out our group, but there was little to pick from and no takers. Since we were here we decided to give to SM a try with four.
Tonight we were planning to invade the Library area of SM. As mentioned before, SM has four separate wings, each of which can take an hour or more to complete depending on the group. The Library is not the toughest wing, but it is far more difficult than the Graveyard, which we did last time we were here.
Most of the mobs in the Library are Scarlet Crusader humans. While they come in all classes, the Crusaders do like hunters, and those hunters like big angry hyenas or hounds as their pets. The place is packed with mobs in small groupings that can easily cause multitudes to aggro if a pull doesn't go just right. They will also flee when low on health, and that is also a serious concern as more and more nearby mob groups are aggroed by the fleeing mobs. To top that off these "trash mobs" are all level 34-35 elites. Against our little foursome of level 30-33's these mobs will be very tough. Wowiki recommends that players be level 33-40.
The Library wing begins with a series of corridors guarded by clumps of mobs. Our first pull drew two mobs. Killing the first one took a long time, and the second one fled and brought back two more. We had to kill five before we finally got a break in the action. This was not going to be easy.
Our second pull was even worse than the first. The fight seemed endless and Philly used two mana pots just to keep up with the healing. I had ten mana pots with me, but I was already concerned about whether it would be enough. We needed some crowd control, and we're without our mage, so the warlock brought out her succubus to seduce one mob. The lock struggled a bit on the first couple pulls, but soon got the hang of it and we had at least one mob under control during the fights.
At the end of the first corridor is a large courtyard. Mobs line the lanes on the outside of the courtyard and patrol the central area as well. We carefully pulled mob clumps into the corridor to keep them from fleeing into the courtyard, which would be disastrous. The warrior died within seconds on the first courtyard pull. The pally stepped in we managed to get through a four mob fight with just the three of us. Well, four counting the succubus, who Philly was keeping healed as well. The fights were taking so long that the succubus Seduce spell had to be applied several times, and each application was less effective, with the mob escaping more and more quickly.
We were successful at clearing the courtyard. That in itself was a pretty good accomplishment. In a room adjacent to the courtyard is the first boss, Houndmaster Loksey. He's a level 34 elite and he has three elite hounds by his side. Four at once. Oh my. Each one of our group has some sort of Fear spell. So we figured that when things got really dicey we would Fear, which momentarily chases the mobs away, to give us some recovery time.
Philly also learned just how useful Fade is in these fights. Fade reduces aggro. In earlier dungeons and fights Philly didn't need it much, and since other toons I play, druid and shaman, have no real aggro reducing spells, I really had no experience with having such an ability. But here in the SM Library Philly had no choice but to keep the heals flowing to both warrior and pally in particular, and Philly would draw aggro. With as many mobs as we were dealing with and the level of damage they could deal, Philly couldn't just heal through it or weather it with a Shield. I started hitting Fade every time one of them stuck to Philly. And you know what? It worked! That mob banging on Philly or piercing her with arrows or gnawing on her bony ankles would immediately turn back to attack someone else as soon as Philly got off the Fade spell.
I did everything I could to help the fights and hang on to mana. Whenever I could get the slightest break in healing, Philly would switch to wand and do damage on whatever mob the warrior was whaling on. While not casting I could get a little mana regen going, shifting back to healing when necessary.
Still, we brought down just one dog before Huld died. The level 30 warrior was really straining in here. We Feared 'em off and sent the level 32 pally in to handle them. The fight went on and on. We brought down the boss, Loksey, but still had two dogs to deal with. Philly was near the point where my only heal spell was going to be a bandage. But the pally had moments to self heal, and between Philly and he and the continuing damage dealing from the lock, we brought them all down.
Houndmaster Loksey dropped a nice two hand weapon that the pally got. But it would have been neat to get the dog whistle, which is used to summon a hound to protect you.
From there we fought our way through another series of corridors to the Library proper, which is just a larger corridor with shelves of books along the walls. We were getting a bit winded, but we were still making progress. In here somewhere is supposed to be a book Philly needs to move forward on that ten quest chain for that wand. I couldn't find it. It was taking up a lot of time. I'd gone back to reading over the quest notes again to see if there were any more clues to it's location when I heard a commotion start up. The warrior, trying to be helpful, moved into a corridor we had already cleared to look around. And discovered how fast the respawns are. That whole section of corridor respawned around him. But we didn't know the extent of the respawn, so we all rushed over to help him. And got caught up in a fight much larger than we could deal with. It was a wipe. The warlock, Kon, had earlier given Philly a soulstone so that I could safely rez in just such a circumstance. But I hadn't noticed that the soulstone had expired and so hadn't asked for a new one. So Philly made two mistakes - not asking for a soulstone renewal, and taking so long trying to find that book we got respawns.
There would be no rez, and so we would all have to release and return to the start of the instance. Where every mob we had previously killed had respawned.
We did not have the time to do all that over again the same night. Philly did not get her book. Not this time, anyway. We will head back in there on sunday with hopefully a fifth player to make the task a little easier.
Our erstwihile warrior is also turning out to show some real promise with the turn of a phrase. Quoting his "in character" report on our first incomplete attempt on a dungeon:
Title: Late Fees enforced at the Scarlet Monastery Library
The Grunt Foundation - heroes of many, warriors extraordinaire - have suffered their first setback.*
*Because defeat is such a strong word...
Although the four were able to claw their way through the persecution-filled halls of the Scarlet Monastery's library wing - defeating scores of Adepts, Gallants, Beastmasters, and Diviners (as well Houndsmaster Loksey and his canine cohorts, taking [Loksey's Training Stick] as a trophy) - a surprise change of guards near the chambers of the nefarious Arcanist Doan led to the defeat of the Grunt warriors.
Now the party nurses its wounds and looks for aid as they plan their revenge attack on the Library. Will they succeed? Stay tuned for the next exciting adventure - same Grunt time, same Grunt server!
The four of us tried to find a fifth to round out our group, but there was little to pick from and no takers. Since we were here we decided to give to SM a try with four.
Tonight we were planning to invade the Library area of SM. As mentioned before, SM has four separate wings, each of which can take an hour or more to complete depending on the group. The Library is not the toughest wing, but it is far more difficult than the Graveyard, which we did last time we were here.
Most of the mobs in the Library are Scarlet Crusader humans. While they come in all classes, the Crusaders do like hunters, and those hunters like big angry hyenas or hounds as their pets. The place is packed with mobs in small groupings that can easily cause multitudes to aggro if a pull doesn't go just right. They will also flee when low on health, and that is also a serious concern as more and more nearby mob groups are aggroed by the fleeing mobs. To top that off these "trash mobs" are all level 34-35 elites. Against our little foursome of level 30-33's these mobs will be very tough. Wowiki recommends that players be level 33-40.
The Library wing begins with a series of corridors guarded by clumps of mobs. Our first pull drew two mobs. Killing the first one took a long time, and the second one fled and brought back two more. We had to kill five before we finally got a break in the action. This was not going to be easy.
Our second pull was even worse than the first. The fight seemed endless and Philly used two mana pots just to keep up with the healing. I had ten mana pots with me, but I was already concerned about whether it would be enough. We needed some crowd control, and we're without our mage, so the warlock brought out her succubus to seduce one mob. The lock struggled a bit on the first couple pulls, but soon got the hang of it and we had at least one mob under control during the fights.
At the end of the first corridor is a large courtyard. Mobs line the lanes on the outside of the courtyard and patrol the central area as well. We carefully pulled mob clumps into the corridor to keep them from fleeing into the courtyard, which would be disastrous. The warrior died within seconds on the first courtyard pull. The pally stepped in we managed to get through a four mob fight with just the three of us. Well, four counting the succubus, who Philly was keeping healed as well. The fights were taking so long that the succubus Seduce spell had to be applied several times, and each application was less effective, with the mob escaping more and more quickly.
We were successful at clearing the courtyard. That in itself was a pretty good accomplishment. In a room adjacent to the courtyard is the first boss, Houndmaster Loksey. He's a level 34 elite and he has three elite hounds by his side. Four at once. Oh my. Each one of our group has some sort of Fear spell. So we figured that when things got really dicey we would Fear, which momentarily chases the mobs away, to give us some recovery time.
Philly also learned just how useful Fade is in these fights. Fade reduces aggro. In earlier dungeons and fights Philly didn't need it much, and since other toons I play, druid and shaman, have no real aggro reducing spells, I really had no experience with having such an ability. But here in the SM Library Philly had no choice but to keep the heals flowing to both warrior and pally in particular, and Philly would draw aggro. With as many mobs as we were dealing with and the level of damage they could deal, Philly couldn't just heal through it or weather it with a Shield. I started hitting Fade every time one of them stuck to Philly. And you know what? It worked! That mob banging on Philly or piercing her with arrows or gnawing on her bony ankles would immediately turn back to attack someone else as soon as Philly got off the Fade spell.
I did everything I could to help the fights and hang on to mana. Whenever I could get the slightest break in healing, Philly would switch to wand and do damage on whatever mob the warrior was whaling on. While not casting I could get a little mana regen going, shifting back to healing when necessary.
Still, we brought down just one dog before Huld died. The level 30 warrior was really straining in here. We Feared 'em off and sent the level 32 pally in to handle them. The fight went on and on. We brought down the boss, Loksey, but still had two dogs to deal with. Philly was near the point where my only heal spell was going to be a bandage. But the pally had moments to self heal, and between Philly and he and the continuing damage dealing from the lock, we brought them all down.
Houndmaster Loksey dropped a nice two hand weapon that the pally got. But it would have been neat to get the dog whistle, which is used to summon a hound to protect you.
From there we fought our way through another series of corridors to the Library proper, which is just a larger corridor with shelves of books along the walls. We were getting a bit winded, but we were still making progress. In here somewhere is supposed to be a book Philly needs to move forward on that ten quest chain for that wand. I couldn't find it. It was taking up a lot of time. I'd gone back to reading over the quest notes again to see if there were any more clues to it's location when I heard a commotion start up. The warrior, trying to be helpful, moved into a corridor we had already cleared to look around. And discovered how fast the respawns are. That whole section of corridor respawned around him. But we didn't know the extent of the respawn, so we all rushed over to help him. And got caught up in a fight much larger than we could deal with. It was a wipe. The warlock, Kon, had earlier given Philly a soulstone so that I could safely rez in just such a circumstance. But I hadn't noticed that the soulstone had expired and so hadn't asked for a new one. So Philly made two mistakes - not asking for a soulstone renewal, and taking so long trying to find that book we got respawns.
There would be no rez, and so we would all have to release and return to the start of the instance. Where every mob we had previously killed had respawned.
We did not have the time to do all that over again the same night. Philly did not get her book. Not this time, anyway. We will head back in there on sunday with hopefully a fifth player to make the task a little easier.
Our erstwihile warrior is also turning out to show some real promise with the turn of a phrase. Quoting his "in character" report on our first incomplete attempt on a dungeon:
Title: Late Fees enforced at the Scarlet Monastery Library
The Grunt Foundation - heroes of many, warriors extraordinaire - have suffered their first setback.*
*Because defeat is such a strong word...
Although the four were able to claw their way through the persecution-filled halls of the Scarlet Monastery's library wing - defeating scores of Adepts, Gallants, Beastmasters, and Diviners (as well Houndsmaster Loksey and his canine cohorts, taking [Loksey's Training Stick] as a trophy) - a surprise change of guards near the chambers of the nefarious Arcanist Doan led to the defeat of the Grunt warriors.
Now the party nurses its wounds and looks for aid as they plan their revenge attack on the Library. Will they succeed? Stay tuned for the next exciting adventure - same Grunt time, same Grunt server!
2008-03-03 Troubling News, but RFK Falls
The Grunt Foundation may have lost one of it's members. The mage Braeco is going to be working on sundays for the foreseeable future and is not sure whether he will be able to continue. We are going to try to work around his work schedule but it will be difficult at best. We wished him the best of luck with the hope that he will be able to rejoin us. If he can't return there will be only four of us.
Sunday morning we got a bit of a late start since we were looking for a 5th for our trip to Razorfen Kraul (RFK). One choice could have been a level 27 pally. But when he asked me what RFK was, and then when he replied to my question, "Have you ever been in an instance?" with, "You mean that swirly thing? I went in one once with some raptors. Had a hard time killing them", I figured we'd take a pass on him. We eventually got a level 31 warlock.
RFK is inhabited by the quilbore - pig people, to put it plainly. Not that there's anything wrong with that. They are descendants of a great boar demigod, who's fallen blood formed the areas of RFK and Razorfen Downs (RFD). The mobs are all high 20's to low 30's elites.
We failed to explain loot rules to the visiting warlock and it came back to haunt us on the first boss, Death's Speaker Jargba. [Death Speaker Robes] dropped, which both warlocks and Philly would have liked to have. We all passed on the BOP drop, which is standard group practice, but the visitor rolled need and of course got it. Sigh. We explained the loot rules and we did not have any further significant issues, although he did try to roll on an item "to disenchant" when someone else needed it. No, we explained in more detail, you can't "win" a DE when someone else will use it. He provided additional DPS and though he was behind everyone in damage dealing but Philly, his help moved us through the instance a little faster. He was pretty impressed with our swift, efficient, bloody path through those quilboar, and we barely slowed down even against the bosses. There were eight of them, and none of them gave us much trouble. As far as drops, there were some good ones for the guildies, but Philly seems to have picked up the same dread "drop avoidance" disease Wild has and did not get a sinlge drop go her way. If it weren't for the nice quest reward from one of the quests, Philly would have walked away from RFK with nothing to show for it. Well, almost, since the quest rewards did DING Philly to level 33.
Sunday morning we got a bit of a late start since we were looking for a 5th for our trip to Razorfen Kraul (RFK). One choice could have been a level 27 pally. But when he asked me what RFK was, and then when he replied to my question, "Have you ever been in an instance?" with, "You mean that swirly thing? I went in one once with some raptors. Had a hard time killing them", I figured we'd take a pass on him. We eventually got a level 31 warlock.
RFK is inhabited by the quilbore - pig people, to put it plainly. Not that there's anything wrong with that. They are descendants of a great boar demigod, who's fallen blood formed the areas of RFK and Razorfen Downs (RFD). The mobs are all high 20's to low 30's elites.
We failed to explain loot rules to the visiting warlock and it came back to haunt us on the first boss, Death's Speaker Jargba. [Death Speaker Robes] dropped, which both warlocks and Philly would have liked to have. We all passed on the BOP drop, which is standard group practice, but the visitor rolled need and of course got it. Sigh. We explained the loot rules and we did not have any further significant issues, although he did try to roll on an item "to disenchant" when someone else needed it. No, we explained in more detail, you can't "win" a DE when someone else will use it. He provided additional DPS and though he was behind everyone in damage dealing but Philly, his help moved us through the instance a little faster. He was pretty impressed with our swift, efficient, bloody path through those quilboar, and we barely slowed down even against the bosses. There were eight of them, and none of them gave us much trouble. As far as drops, there were some good ones for the guildies, but Philly seems to have picked up the same dread "drop avoidance" disease Wild has and did not get a sinlge drop go her way. If it weren't for the nice quest reward from one of the quests, Philly would have walked away from RFK with nothing to show for it. Well, almost, since the quest rewards did DING Philly to level 33.
2008-02-27 Testing Scarlet Monastery
The GF run tuesday night turned out to be a pretty quick one. Our paladin never made it in game and the warrior was afk long enough for the other three of us to get bored. After killing everything outside Scarlet Monastery (SM), we entered the foyer area and cleared all the non-elite level 30+ mobs inside. We had left the afk warrior sitting on the grass outside. We didn't notice the respawning mobs out there until the warrior was already dead. Oops.
He didn't mind and once he returned the four of us decided to try the SM Graveyard area. There are four sections in SM, with the graveyard being the easiest. The mobs are all level 30+ elites. There is only one boss to fight, but there are several bosses that are rare spawns that if we got lucky we might get to kill.
It was a bit anti-climactic. We cleared the graveyard without too much trouble and killed the lone boss. The blue shoulder piece that dropped was not as good as what Philly was already wearing, and even though it had some spell damage on it, the mage and warlock both tried to get the other one to take it. Neither really needed it.
No rare bosses spawned and the whole thing took about 30 minutes. I suggested we reset and do it again (I was 90% of the way to level 32), but no one was that interested and we called it an evening.
Philly still had quests in Stonetalon to do so I trotted her out there and grinded mobs out in the Charred Vale until she DINGED! to level 32.
Yep, a slow night.
He didn't mind and once he returned the four of us decided to try the SM Graveyard area. There are four sections in SM, with the graveyard being the easiest. The mobs are all level 30+ elites. There is only one boss to fight, but there are several bosses that are rare spawns that if we got lucky we might get to kill.
It was a bit anti-climactic. We cleared the graveyard without too much trouble and killed the lone boss. The blue shoulder piece that dropped was not as good as what Philly was already wearing, and even though it had some spell damage on it, the mage and warlock both tried to get the other one to take it. Neither really needed it.
No rare bosses spawned and the whole thing took about 30 minutes. I suggested we reset and do it again (I was 90% of the way to level 32), but no one was that interested and we called it an evening.
Philly still had quests in Stonetalon to do so I trotted her out there and grinded mobs out in the Charred Vale until she DINGED! to level 32.
Yep, a slow night.
2008-02-25 Dun Garok
Philly was back in the saddle once again sunday morning for the regular Grunt Foundation outing. For the first time in three meetings we had our full five back together again. The missing days had gotten us a bit spread out in level, with two at level 28, one at 29, and Philly and one other at level 30. Philly was just barely level 30, though.
I had some RL visiting to do so Philly was under a pretty strict time limit. We decided to spend the morning questing to get better prepared for our next dungeon adventure and because some of the dungeon quests we wanted required players to be at least level 30.
We had as our main target the dwarven underground fortress of Dun Garok in the Hillsbrad Foothills. But we had some pre-quest work to do first. As usual we moved fast through the quests, but there was a lot of killing to be done, and it took some time. There was more murloc killing, too (see why those beasties get such attention? They're everywhere!). This time they were along the bank of a river in Southshore, which is an alliance stronghold and defended by alliance mobs that will set the pvp flag if attacked. In our usual rush we didn't bother slipping past the alliance mobs, just waded in and killed them along with the murlocs. The pally died during that initial fight as he got out of range of Philly's heals. Philly rezzed him for the next round of murloc killings. With all of us flagged for pvp, we might have made an enticing target for alliance players, but there was only one level 40 something around. There was also some comfort in that there were five of us to deal with. If someone or someone's wanted a piece of us, have at it.
Philly was down to her last 45 minutes of game time when we finally were ready for Dun Garok. The fortress has several levels with small, cramped passages and rooms fit for dwarves. The smaller undead Philly was a little more comfortable than big Wild was when he did this place, but it is still tough to get around and keep everyone visible for healing. There are three quests to do, as well, one of them a random sword drop that can be irritatingly hard to get, and another a random spawn of barrels that can also take time for all five of us to get. Not to mention the boss dwarf which has a long spawn time.
We pounded through the place in record time, clearing every dwarf with no deaths. We are really working well together. But the boss hadn't spawned and the sword didn't drop. So we went to the cozy room (cozy now because it was empty save for dwarf corpses) where the boss spawns. We sat in chairs around the fire and chatted while we waited.
When respawns started to appear, and still no boss, we swept through the place again and cleared it out a second time. The sword dropped this time. When Wild did this quest only one person could loot the sword, so it had to drop five times. But they changed that, and all of us were able to loot the sword. Back to the boss room, and this time he was there. It was a quick kill. Philly had picked up a barrel during the second clearing, and everyone else had gotten theirs as well. It took us 35 minutes to complete all three quests and clear the place twice. Not bad at all.
I was out of time and had to leave, so I've still to sort through Philly's bags and to turn in the quests. Philly made level 31, though, even without the quest turn ins, and should be well on her way to 32.
I had some RL visiting to do so Philly was under a pretty strict time limit. We decided to spend the morning questing to get better prepared for our next dungeon adventure and because some of the dungeon quests we wanted required players to be at least level 30.
We had as our main target the dwarven underground fortress of Dun Garok in the Hillsbrad Foothills. But we had some pre-quest work to do first. As usual we moved fast through the quests, but there was a lot of killing to be done, and it took some time. There was more murloc killing, too (see why those beasties get such attention? They're everywhere!). This time they were along the bank of a river in Southshore, which is an alliance stronghold and defended by alliance mobs that will set the pvp flag if attacked. In our usual rush we didn't bother slipping past the alliance mobs, just waded in and killed them along with the murlocs. The pally died during that initial fight as he got out of range of Philly's heals. Philly rezzed him for the next round of murloc killings. With all of us flagged for pvp, we might have made an enticing target for alliance players, but there was only one level 40 something around. There was also some comfort in that there were five of us to deal with. If someone or someone's wanted a piece of us, have at it.
Philly was down to her last 45 minutes of game time when we finally were ready for Dun Garok. The fortress has several levels with small, cramped passages and rooms fit for dwarves. The smaller undead Philly was a little more comfortable than big Wild was when he did this place, but it is still tough to get around and keep everyone visible for healing. There are three quests to do, as well, one of them a random sword drop that can be irritatingly hard to get, and another a random spawn of barrels that can also take time for all five of us to get. Not to mention the boss dwarf which has a long spawn time.
We pounded through the place in record time, clearing every dwarf with no deaths. We are really working well together. But the boss hadn't spawned and the sword didn't drop. So we went to the cozy room (cozy now because it was empty save for dwarf corpses) where the boss spawns. We sat in chairs around the fire and chatted while we waited.
When respawns started to appear, and still no boss, we swept through the place again and cleared it out a second time. The sword dropped this time. When Wild did this quest only one person could loot the sword, so it had to drop five times. But they changed that, and all of us were able to loot the sword. Back to the boss room, and this time he was there. It was a quick kill. Philly had picked up a barrel during the second clearing, and everyone else had gotten theirs as well. It took us 35 minutes to complete all three quests and clear the place twice. Not bad at all.
I was out of time and had to leave, so I've still to sort through Philly's bags and to turn in the quests. Philly made level 31, though, even without the quest turn ins, and should be well on her way to 32.
2008-02-19 Just Grinding
Sunday's run with the GF was more questing this time. A couple of players wanted to add another level or two before taking on RFK and no one really wanted to repeat any of the dungeons we'd already done so far. So it was off to the Hillsbrad Foothills to work on [The Battle of Hillsbrad] quest series, kill endless farmers, and skin lions and bears. The farmer farming was interesting, as the warrior and paladin would each try to outdo the other in seeing how many they could aggro at once by running and circling through the fields. Philly trotted along behind them, dropping heals on them to keep them going, and when the mobs were all collected together the warlock and mage would drop big AoE spells and burn them all down. We all had to collect 30 skulls each from the farmers, and it took us a good long while even using that method. Many of those farmers were so stupid they didn't even have skulls. We got a good ways into the quest series, but the battle with the dwarves in Dun Garok would have to wait another day.
2008-02-13 Looking For Business
GF is moving fast through the dungeons and we are considering tackling Razorfen Kraul (RFK) this coming sunday. This could be our first real challenge as a group. Since this thursday is Valentine's Day two of the five players (including yours truly) will not be in game that night. It looks like the other three will find something to do, though. This will be the first meeting Philly will miss.
Since we are moving so fast I'm not certain where we will be questing in between our dungeon runs. I took some time to check on the quests that we haven't done in the areas we've been working to see what quest rewards might still be worth going after.
I started with Hillsbrad Foothills, as we may not ever get back to questing there unless there is something we really want. The only challenge remaining for us looks to be [The Battle of Hillsbrad], which is a 7 quest chain that takes us again and again into Dun Garok, a dwarf packed underground fortress with horrible sight lines and terrific multi-mob fights. Philly would like to have the gloves that drop from the final quest. Many folks don't like this chain, though, and the gloves aren't blue or anything, but it's it's on Philly "wantahave" list.
In Ashenvale, which is our most likely questing area, there are two in particular that interests Philly. [The Lost Pages] is a pain, because you have to fill up your bags with pages and pages to build a set of books that also eventually yields a glove quest reward slightly better than the Hillsbrad one. Philly would take either.
But the best one for quest rewards appears to be [Warsong Supplies], which Philly could likely solo if the group doesn't do it. It offers a blue cloth belt and mail gloves as rewards that should help all five of us.
In the end Philly couldn't wait for the group to tackle the [Warsong Supplies] quest. Last night she went after the four items the quest called for. She already had one of the items, which dropped while she was killing furlbogs on the way to trying to get that cookbook. The second item was an easy pick up in Booty Bay, and the third required buying a deadly blunderbuss. Philly hated to part with an entire gold piece for that, but the weapon in made by engineers and we don't have an engineer in the guild. The final piece required fighting jaedenar satyrs in Ashenvale. That was more fun that I thought it would be. Wild never liked these mobs - they can Fear and Silence and generally make killing them very inconvenient. The Silence is actually a stink bomb kind of thing - you know you're going to get a cloud of stinky stuff whenever they raise their arms in the air. But they couldn't stop Philly from using Shield and Wanding them to death if I had to. Philly fought her way into the camp and took the item needed. On the way out of the camp one of her targets fled, aggroing another satyr, and while she was killing that one a third respawned right next to her. Three up, three down. Philly sure likes her new blue belt.
Out in the Barrens we could really challenge ourselves and take on the Alliance Outrunners that ride through the Barrens. The outrunners are four elites, and if I recall correctly, fighting them flags you for pvp. But killing them gets [The Runed Scroll], which leads to a quest to kill a level 29 elite. Nice caster gloves are the reward.
Since we are moving so fast I'm not certain where we will be questing in between our dungeon runs. I took some time to check on the quests that we haven't done in the areas we've been working to see what quest rewards might still be worth going after.
I started with Hillsbrad Foothills, as we may not ever get back to questing there unless there is something we really want. The only challenge remaining for us looks to be [The Battle of Hillsbrad], which is a 7 quest chain that takes us again and again into Dun Garok, a dwarf packed underground fortress with horrible sight lines and terrific multi-mob fights. Philly would like to have the gloves that drop from the final quest. Many folks don't like this chain, though, and the gloves aren't blue or anything, but it's it's on Philly "wantahave" list.
In Ashenvale, which is our most likely questing area, there are two in particular that interests Philly. [The Lost Pages] is a pain, because you have to fill up your bags with pages and pages to build a set of books that also eventually yields a glove quest reward slightly better than the Hillsbrad one. Philly would take either.
But the best one for quest rewards appears to be [Warsong Supplies], which Philly could likely solo if the group doesn't do it. It offers a blue cloth belt and mail gloves as rewards that should help all five of us.
In the end Philly couldn't wait for the group to tackle the [Warsong Supplies] quest. Last night she went after the four items the quest called for. She already had one of the items, which dropped while she was killing furlbogs on the way to trying to get that cookbook. The second item was an easy pick up in Booty Bay, and the third required buying a deadly blunderbuss. Philly hated to part with an entire gold piece for that, but the weapon in made by engineers and we don't have an engineer in the guild. The final piece required fighting jaedenar satyrs in Ashenvale. That was more fun that I thought it would be. Wild never liked these mobs - they can Fear and Silence and generally make killing them very inconvenient. The Silence is actually a stink bomb kind of thing - you know you're going to get a cloud of stinky stuff whenever they raise their arms in the air. But they couldn't stop Philly from using Shield and Wanding them to death if I had to. Philly fought her way into the camp and took the item needed. On the way out of the camp one of her targets fled, aggroing another satyr, and while she was killing that one a third respawned right next to her. Three up, three down. Philly sure likes her new blue belt.
Out in the Barrens we could really challenge ourselves and take on the Alliance Outrunners that ride through the Barrens. The outrunners are four elites, and if I recall correctly, fighting them flags you for pvp. But killing them gets [The Runed Scroll], which leads to a quest to kill a level 29 elite. Nice caster gloves are the reward.
2008-02-12 The Master's Return
The Masters have returned, they say not from where. All seems back to normal, and even the imps seem to be somewhat subdued, at least for the moment.
Jovia was in the stockroom, doing inventory on various items from a locked chest. Definitely not Inn business, and only she had the key to that heavy laden box. While she worked Jovia puzzled about the response she had gotten from the Masters after her reports of the GF's conquests in Blackfathom Deeps. Clearly pleased with the growing power of the group, and content that they are back to full strength, she still sensed an undercurrent of unease when she reported the death of Aku'mai, a hydra that held some sway over the denizens of that place. The hydra was certainly powerful, so were they surprised that the GF were that capable so soon? That did not seem right, but she had no other explanation.
Jovia pulled the latest missive from the Masters received just this morning out of her robe pocket. She did not need to unroll it, as she had already read it's content. The adventurers confidence soared with the ease in which Blackfathom Deeps was forced to give up it's watery riches. Now the Grunt Foundation has decided to test their growing independence and have elected to pursue private matters for a time before gathering together for their next mission. The Masters are giving them some rope, but it comes with a price, and Jovia hoped the leeway the Masters were allowing did not come with a noose on the other end.
The first part of the Masters note Jovia understood. It was a task seemingly unrelated to the main focus of the group, but it would test both their allegiance and their progress. And perhaps Jovia's ability to control them as well.
The first part read: Task them to slay the Alliance outrunners that have been using the Barrens to deliver enemy messages. Take [The Runed Scroll] and let it lead them back to the sender - and kill her. Report when it is done.
Jovia knows the outrunners by their deadly reputation, and who they report to. It is a dangerous assignment.
The second part chilled her deeply. It was written on the same single sheet, but it was written in no Masters hand that Jovia knew. It said:
Aku'mai is returned to his place. Do not disturb the pet again.
The unseen hand in the Masters affairs that Jovia had sensed earlier was still at work. Jovia needed more information, but she dared not openly seek what she feared she might find. Jovia needed help. Huldu had taken an interest in the history of Azeroth, Jovia had noted. Perhaps that would serve her purpose now. She penned a short note and left it in his room at the Inn, along with the task she would set them on:
Grunt Foundation - Those to whom I report are pleased with your success and progress. As further proof of your allegiance you are directed to intercept the Alliance outrunners that are violating Horde territory in the Barrens and take [The Runed Scroll] they carry. Then trace and kill the sender. Take whatever time it takes to complete.
For Huldu: If you would aid me, I have need of information about the hydra Aku'mai, who was slain by this group in the deepest depths of Blackfathom Deeps. Research this for me and report back. Tell no one of what you find other than the GF.
Jovia Sends
Jovia was in the stockroom, doing inventory on various items from a locked chest. Definitely not Inn business, and only she had the key to that heavy laden box. While she worked Jovia puzzled about the response she had gotten from the Masters after her reports of the GF's conquests in Blackfathom Deeps. Clearly pleased with the growing power of the group, and content that they are back to full strength, she still sensed an undercurrent of unease when she reported the death of Aku'mai, a hydra that held some sway over the denizens of that place. The hydra was certainly powerful, so were they surprised that the GF were that capable so soon? That did not seem right, but she had no other explanation.
Jovia pulled the latest missive from the Masters received just this morning out of her robe pocket. She did not need to unroll it, as she had already read it's content. The adventurers confidence soared with the ease in which Blackfathom Deeps was forced to give up it's watery riches. Now the Grunt Foundation has decided to test their growing independence and have elected to pursue private matters for a time before gathering together for their next mission. The Masters are giving them some rope, but it comes with a price, and Jovia hoped the leeway the Masters were allowing did not come with a noose on the other end.
The first part of the Masters note Jovia understood. It was a task seemingly unrelated to the main focus of the group, but it would test both their allegiance and their progress. And perhaps Jovia's ability to control them as well.
The first part read: Task them to slay the Alliance outrunners that have been using the Barrens to deliver enemy messages. Take [The Runed Scroll] and let it lead them back to the sender - and kill her. Report when it is done.
Jovia knows the outrunners by their deadly reputation, and who they report to. It is a dangerous assignment.
The second part chilled her deeply. It was written on the same single sheet, but it was written in no Masters hand that Jovia knew. It said:
Aku'mai is returned to his place. Do not disturb the pet again.
The unseen hand in the Masters affairs that Jovia had sensed earlier was still at work. Jovia needed more information, but she dared not openly seek what she feared she might find. Jovia needed help. Huldu had taken an interest in the history of Azeroth, Jovia had noted. Perhaps that would serve her purpose now. She penned a short note and left it in his room at the Inn, along with the task she would set them on:
Grunt Foundation - Those to whom I report are pleased with your success and progress. As further proof of your allegiance you are directed to intercept the Alliance outrunners that are violating Horde territory in the Barrens and take [The Runed Scroll] they carry. Then trace and kill the sender. Take whatever time it takes to complete.
For Huldu: If you would aid me, I have need of information about the hydra Aku'mai, who was slain by this group in the deepest depths of Blackfathom Deeps. Research this for me and report back. Tell no one of what you find other than the GF.
Jovia Sends
2008-02-11 Blackfathom Deeps
Sunday morning dawned bright and warm. It was almost a shame to spend that morning in the dark, water filled warrens within Blackfathom Deeps. But gold, loot, and high adventure awaited!
BFD is almost always called Blackfathom Depths, but Deeps is it's real name. The underground ruins are mostly water filled and we will spend most of the run wading and swimming through streams, pools, and lakes. The dungeon also has a very long, mob filled area before the actual entrance to the instance itself, similar in that way to Wailing Caverns. There are also a lot of Bosses - 8 in all. It is a mid-20s dungeon, and like most of the pre-TBC instances, has been "tuned" to improve levelling. What that really means is that bosses that were as high as level 26-27 elites when Wild ran it, are now capped at level 24 elite.
There are only two quests to enter BFD with, but there are two more that are picked up within the dungeon.
The GF had a full team this time. Level-wise we went in with 2-27s, 2-26s, and a 25. The mage was the level 25. The two week absence of the warlock, Kon, due to computer problems, didn't seem to hurt his grinding, as he jumped from 24 to 26 shortly after getting back. Having Kon back was a big help for BFD, since warlocks have a "Breathe Underwater" spell that allowed us to swim and fight underwater without worrying about drowning.
We fought through the trash mobs down a long, twisty series of tunnels. The ceilings were low in many places, making sight lines hard and giving Philly a claustrophobic feel. Once inside the instance, though, the ceilings rise to a more normal height in most places. A partnership of naga and satyrs with the Twilight's Hammer cult control BFD, and where they still protect and serve a favored pet of the Old Gods. That pet is the final boss in BFD.
The first boss the group encountered, though, was Ghamoo-ra, an elite turtle found on a circular pad of land in the middle of a lake. The place has a mix of elite and non-elite mobs, including many in the water. After clearing through the pool to get to Ghamoo-ra, we attacked and killed the 23 elite with little trouble. The warrior got a nicer shield to replace the one he'd gotten from that other turtle in WC.
Philly had had to make some healing adjustments for this run. I had started out as usual, spamming the HoT Renew to keep everyone topped off. The group was doing fine, but was taking more damage than in prior dungeons, and Philly started getting worried about mana use. Renews cost considerable mana and I was casting it a lot more in BFD. I had to remind myself that priests were not HoT machines like resto druid Wild, and that I'd better start using longer cast, more mana friendly spells. After a little experimentation Philly settled on a 2.5 sec cast Lesser Heal as the mainstay heal, and would cast it whenever a player got below 80% health. Even with both the warrior and pally tanking at the same time on trash mob fights, Philly had no trouble managing mana and keeping them both healthy. Well, except once.
The pally died during one of the underwater fights. He and the warrior were tag teaming 4-5 mobs when the warrior discovered that his underwater breathing had worn off. Philly didn't really notice because she can hold her breath underwater a lot longer than anyone else. The warrior headed for the surface. I can only surmise that the pally was left with all five mobs on him, because in a couple of seconds his health plummeted. Philly dropped a Renew on him, but before I could even get off a follow up Flash Heal the pally was dead. With several mobs now loose it was a chaotic underwater struggle, but the rest of us finally pulled through. Philly got to use her resurrection spell for the 2nd time ever. We all checked to make sure we had our underwater breathing spell refreshed before taking a dip after that. Oh, and the warlock learned how to properly use his master soulstone spell. Philly got it as wipe insurance, so I would always try to position Philly during fights where she could die safely if necessary, since I would be able to use the stone to self-rez.
We pushed on, killing the next three bosses in succession with cool precision. Down went Lady Sarevess, Gelihast, and Lorgus Jett. From those three were two blue drops, a leather piece and an axe that no one needed.
The next boss, Baron Aquanis, is a Summoned boss that appears when using the Fathom Stone, a pillar found at the bottom of one of the lakes. The water elemental was not hard to defeat, but Philly did something wrong in regard to the quest related to this fight. After fighting the Baron, Philly should have been able to pick up a fathom core, which completes the quest. She never picked it up and could not complete the quest. The Baron also dropped an axe. Sigh.
Another Boss, Old Serra'kis, is an optional elite sea serpent that requires some considerable underwater swimming to find. I can't remember if Wild ever fought him. Some of our group had never even heard of him. We went after him, found him, and killed him. He dropped a very nice dagger that any rogue would love to have. Oh, wait, we don't have any rogues. Philly did get a 10 slot bag out of that fight. She was the only guildie that still needed one.
The path to the Twilight Lord Kelris, who with his minions stands in protection of the pet of the Old Gods, requires fighting through a tight sunken corridor of water elementals, and dealing with numerous mobs while walking a narrow raised ledge that twists this way and that as the battles rage. Philly tripped over her own bony feet and fell off the ledge and into the water once, which then required swimming around to a ramp and killing a couple of water creatures in the way. That was embarrassing after having successfully negotiated the harder first part of that path, which required jumping across open water to rocks or platforms four times. Our mage missed a jump on that part and had to be rescued from the water.
We finally got to Kelris, who stands in a trance while we murder all the minions around him. Kelris, when attacked, can both mind control and sleep players. He did mind control the warrior for a bit, but the pally was there backing him up, and Kelris went down. Kelris dropped [Gaze Dreamer Pants]. Finally, a cloth caster blue! Philly didn't win the roll, but it was nice to finally see someone get something they could use.
To reach the pet, we then had to activate four candles set around the room, one at a time. Each candle released a group of mobs to defeat, who approach from multiple sides of the room. These fights got a bit hairy as nearly everyone would take some hits until the pally and warrior could round them all up. Then the AoE would drop them pretty quick.
Finishing off the last of the mobs opens a long passageway filled with shallow water. At the end of the passage is Aku'mai, a favored pet of the Old Gods. A level 24 elite, he supposedly hits hard, but did not put up much resistance against us and went down quickly. Aku'mai dropped another leather piece we could not use.
From a loot perspective, Philly got little of any worth and only one blue drop found a home in someone's gear. Nothing we could do about that, though. The quest rewards, though, were nice enough to take the sting out of the lack of good dungeon drops. All of the caster's likely chose [Witch's Finger] and [Gravestone Scepter]. The former is an off-hand that Philly will hold on to while looking for a good main hand to go with it. The Scepter is a shadow damage based wand that jumps Philly's wand DPS from 25 DPS to over 29 DPS. Very, very nice. The wand shoots a really cool looking purple flame when fired, too. Imagine all three of us caster's lighting up the place with purple shadow flames.
Philly made level 28, and the guild added another dungeon to our list of conquests: RFC, WC, SFK, and now BFD.
BFD is almost always called Blackfathom Depths, but Deeps is it's real name. The underground ruins are mostly water filled and we will spend most of the run wading and swimming through streams, pools, and lakes. The dungeon also has a very long, mob filled area before the actual entrance to the instance itself, similar in that way to Wailing Caverns. There are also a lot of Bosses - 8 in all. It is a mid-20s dungeon, and like most of the pre-TBC instances, has been "tuned" to improve levelling. What that really means is that bosses that were as high as level 26-27 elites when Wild ran it, are now capped at level 24 elite.
There are only two quests to enter BFD with, but there are two more that are picked up within the dungeon.
The GF had a full team this time. Level-wise we went in with 2-27s, 2-26s, and a 25. The mage was the level 25. The two week absence of the warlock, Kon, due to computer problems, didn't seem to hurt his grinding, as he jumped from 24 to 26 shortly after getting back. Having Kon back was a big help for BFD, since warlocks have a "Breathe Underwater" spell that allowed us to swim and fight underwater without worrying about drowning.
We fought through the trash mobs down a long, twisty series of tunnels. The ceilings were low in many places, making sight lines hard and giving Philly a claustrophobic feel. Once inside the instance, though, the ceilings rise to a more normal height in most places. A partnership of naga and satyrs with the Twilight's Hammer cult control BFD, and where they still protect and serve a favored pet of the Old Gods. That pet is the final boss in BFD.
The first boss the group encountered, though, was Ghamoo-ra, an elite turtle found on a circular pad of land in the middle of a lake. The place has a mix of elite and non-elite mobs, including many in the water. After clearing through the pool to get to Ghamoo-ra, we attacked and killed the 23 elite with little trouble. The warrior got a nicer shield to replace the one he'd gotten from that other turtle in WC.
Philly had had to make some healing adjustments for this run. I had started out as usual, spamming the HoT Renew to keep everyone topped off. The group was doing fine, but was taking more damage than in prior dungeons, and Philly started getting worried about mana use. Renews cost considerable mana and I was casting it a lot more in BFD. I had to remind myself that priests were not HoT machines like resto druid Wild, and that I'd better start using longer cast, more mana friendly spells. After a little experimentation Philly settled on a 2.5 sec cast Lesser Heal as the mainstay heal, and would cast it whenever a player got below 80% health. Even with both the warrior and pally tanking at the same time on trash mob fights, Philly had no trouble managing mana and keeping them both healthy. Well, except once.
The pally died during one of the underwater fights. He and the warrior were tag teaming 4-5 mobs when the warrior discovered that his underwater breathing had worn off. Philly didn't really notice because she can hold her breath underwater a lot longer than anyone else. The warrior headed for the surface. I can only surmise that the pally was left with all five mobs on him, because in a couple of seconds his health plummeted. Philly dropped a Renew on him, but before I could even get off a follow up Flash Heal the pally was dead. With several mobs now loose it was a chaotic underwater struggle, but the rest of us finally pulled through. Philly got to use her resurrection spell for the 2nd time ever. We all checked to make sure we had our underwater breathing spell refreshed before taking a dip after that. Oh, and the warlock learned how to properly use his master soulstone spell. Philly got it as wipe insurance, so I would always try to position Philly during fights where she could die safely if necessary, since I would be able to use the stone to self-rez.
We pushed on, killing the next three bosses in succession with cool precision. Down went Lady Sarevess, Gelihast, and Lorgus Jett. From those three were two blue drops, a leather piece and an axe that no one needed.
The next boss, Baron Aquanis, is a Summoned boss that appears when using the Fathom Stone, a pillar found at the bottom of one of the lakes. The water elemental was not hard to defeat, but Philly did something wrong in regard to the quest related to this fight. After fighting the Baron, Philly should have been able to pick up a fathom core, which completes the quest. She never picked it up and could not complete the quest. The Baron also dropped an axe. Sigh.
Another Boss, Old Serra'kis, is an optional elite sea serpent that requires some considerable underwater swimming to find. I can't remember if Wild ever fought him. Some of our group had never even heard of him. We went after him, found him, and killed him. He dropped a very nice dagger that any rogue would love to have. Oh, wait, we don't have any rogues. Philly did get a 10 slot bag out of that fight. She was the only guildie that still needed one.
The path to the Twilight Lord Kelris, who with his minions stands in protection of the pet of the Old Gods, requires fighting through a tight sunken corridor of water elementals, and dealing with numerous mobs while walking a narrow raised ledge that twists this way and that as the battles rage. Philly tripped over her own bony feet and fell off the ledge and into the water once, which then required swimming around to a ramp and killing a couple of water creatures in the way. That was embarrassing after having successfully negotiated the harder first part of that path, which required jumping across open water to rocks or platforms four times. Our mage missed a jump on that part and had to be rescued from the water.
We finally got to Kelris, who stands in a trance while we murder all the minions around him. Kelris, when attacked, can both mind control and sleep players. He did mind control the warrior for a bit, but the pally was there backing him up, and Kelris went down. Kelris dropped [Gaze Dreamer Pants]. Finally, a cloth caster blue! Philly didn't win the roll, but it was nice to finally see someone get something they could use.
To reach the pet, we then had to activate four candles set around the room, one at a time. Each candle released a group of mobs to defeat, who approach from multiple sides of the room. These fights got a bit hairy as nearly everyone would take some hits until the pally and warrior could round them all up. Then the AoE would drop them pretty quick.
Finishing off the last of the mobs opens a long passageway filled with shallow water. At the end of the passage is Aku'mai, a favored pet of the Old Gods. A level 24 elite, he supposedly hits hard, but did not put up much resistance against us and went down quickly. Aku'mai dropped another leather piece we could not use.
From a loot perspective, Philly got little of any worth and only one blue drop found a home in someone's gear. Nothing we could do about that, though. The quest rewards, though, were nice enough to take the sting out of the lack of good dungeon drops. All of the caster's likely chose [Witch's Finger] and [Gravestone Scepter]. The former is an off-hand that Philly will hold on to while looking for a good main hand to go with it. The Scepter is a shadow damage based wand that jumps Philly's wand DPS from 25 DPS to over 29 DPS. Very, very nice. The wand shoots a really cool looking purple flame when fired, too. Imagine all three of us caster's lighting up the place with purple shadow flames.
Philly made level 28, and the guild added another dungeon to our list of conquests: RFC, WC, SFK, and now BFD.
2008-02-08 Only Three to Tango
Philly wasn't sure who would make the regular thursday run or what we would be doing, so I logged in and then went to get dinner as no one else was in game yet. Brae had arleady let us know that he would not be able to make it. Arq has been ill and we weren't sure if he would be in. Kon had left word that his computer repair was complete and that he expected to be there. We had discussed possibly making another foray into SFK so that Kon could get the quests done that he'd missed.
But as 5:30pm became 5:50pm only Philly and the warrior, Huldu, had showed up. We had just agreed to just help each other work on raising our skill levels for our professions when Arq arrived. Yes, he was still not well. But he'd been sleeping all day and wanted to spend some time in game. We talked about what we could do with the three of us, and Arq mentioned that he still needed to complete a couple quests in his pally quest chain. He needed to do another Ragefire Chasm run for one of them. That sounded like fun, so we headed for Orgrimmar.
RFC is no match for three mid-level 20s players, so we made it as challenging as possible. The warrior and pally would try to aggro as many mobs as they possibly could, drag them all into a pile, and then we'd work through killing them all. No matter how many they grabbed, Philly only needed to do light healing, and spent most of the time helping to kill the mobs. We had a blast.
We finally got to the area for the pally quest. We cleared the room and then arq activated a stone that is set at the back of the room. I've seen that stone there many times on RFC farming runs, even tried to activate it, and never knew what it was for. Now I knew. The stone released a level 20 elite demon, and the three of us took him down.
Amazingly, Philly even got a drop out of RFC that she could use. On our prior RFC run, Kon had mistakenly rolled need on a very nice blue chest piece called [Robe of Evocation], which drops off of one of the bosses. We kidded him about it but no big deal. On this run the robe dropped again, and it was still a better chest piece than the one Philly was wearing. Other blue gear that dropped we could only greed on and then sell as we didn't have our disenchanter, Brae, with us.
The RFC run didn't take that long, and since none of us had collected the flight paths we would need to get to BFD yet, we decided to make that run.
It's a long way on foot, but we didn't have any other choice. We gathered back up at the Crossroads, and then headed north for Ashenvale. Once in Ashenvale, we wound along a number of trails to get to Splintertree Post, the first flight path we needed. From there we headed west. Since we were doing other things while making the run (Philly would take side trips to collect flowers, for example) we got pretty strung out, but we all knew where we were going (yes, even me). That almost got Huldu in trouble, though, as he was the only one of us to encounter the elite giant that patrols one section of road in Ashenvale. If I recall the giant is a level 36. To Huldu he was ?? and five times Huldu's size. He managed to avoid him, although it got his heart going pretty good.
Straddling the road we were on is Astraanar, an alliance town. Wild once accidentally tried to enter that town, and fled for his life, alliance npcs hard on his cow tail. We diverted around the town, killing the occasional spider that got too close.
From there the road twisted northward, and eventually there is a path that breaks away from the main road and heads to the coast.
At the coast it's a short run south to the Zoram Strand outpost and the flight path we needed. To the north of the post is Blackfathom Deeps.
About halfway through that road trip Kon arrived. His computer wasn't as "fixed" as he thought it was and he'd had to upload and install some drivers. He hoped it was working now. We used the Summoning Stone at BFD to summon him out to us, and then Philly showed him the flight path at Zoram strand. Arq had one last quest to do for his pally quest chain, which was to kill nagas right in the area where we were. We helped with that, and arq then headed back to the quest giver. The quest reward was a very nice blue level polearm. That will be nice to have in BFD come sunday.
Huldu had to leave, and that left just Philly and Kon. Since Kon did not have the flight path at Spinebreaker Hold, I offered to make the run all the way back with him to show him where that was. Philly then called it a night.
Before leaving, though, Philly was able to confirm that I can change our quest night from thursday to tuesday. Kon is commited on tuesdays for the next two weeks, so it will be 26 Feb before we make the change.
But as 5:30pm became 5:50pm only Philly and the warrior, Huldu, had showed up. We had just agreed to just help each other work on raising our skill levels for our professions when Arq arrived. Yes, he was still not well. But he'd been sleeping all day and wanted to spend some time in game. We talked about what we could do with the three of us, and Arq mentioned that he still needed to complete a couple quests in his pally quest chain. He needed to do another Ragefire Chasm run for one of them. That sounded like fun, so we headed for Orgrimmar.
RFC is no match for three mid-level 20s players, so we made it as challenging as possible. The warrior and pally would try to aggro as many mobs as they possibly could, drag them all into a pile, and then we'd work through killing them all. No matter how many they grabbed, Philly only needed to do light healing, and spent most of the time helping to kill the mobs. We had a blast.
We finally got to the area for the pally quest. We cleared the room and then arq activated a stone that is set at the back of the room. I've seen that stone there many times on RFC farming runs, even tried to activate it, and never knew what it was for. Now I knew. The stone released a level 20 elite demon, and the three of us took him down.
Amazingly, Philly even got a drop out of RFC that she could use. On our prior RFC run, Kon had mistakenly rolled need on a very nice blue chest piece called [Robe of Evocation], which drops off of one of the bosses. We kidded him about it but no big deal. On this run the robe dropped again, and it was still a better chest piece than the one Philly was wearing. Other blue gear that dropped we could only greed on and then sell as we didn't have our disenchanter, Brae, with us.
The RFC run didn't take that long, and since none of us had collected the flight paths we would need to get to BFD yet, we decided to make that run.
It's a long way on foot, but we didn't have any other choice. We gathered back up at the Crossroads, and then headed north for Ashenvale. Once in Ashenvale, we wound along a number of trails to get to Splintertree Post, the first flight path we needed. From there we headed west. Since we were doing other things while making the run (Philly would take side trips to collect flowers, for example) we got pretty strung out, but we all knew where we were going (yes, even me). That almost got Huldu in trouble, though, as he was the only one of us to encounter the elite giant that patrols one section of road in Ashenvale. If I recall the giant is a level 36. To Huldu he was ?? and five times Huldu's size. He managed to avoid him, although it got his heart going pretty good.
Straddling the road we were on is Astraanar, an alliance town. Wild once accidentally tried to enter that town, and fled for his life, alliance npcs hard on his cow tail. We diverted around the town, killing the occasional spider that got too close.
From there the road twisted northward, and eventually there is a path that breaks away from the main road and heads to the coast.
At the coast it's a short run south to the Zoram Strand outpost and the flight path we needed. To the north of the post is Blackfathom Deeps.
About halfway through that road trip Kon arrived. His computer wasn't as "fixed" as he thought it was and he'd had to upload and install some drivers. He hoped it was working now. We used the Summoning Stone at BFD to summon him out to us, and then Philly showed him the flight path at Zoram strand. Arq had one last quest to do for his pally quest chain, which was to kill nagas right in the area where we were. We helped with that, and arq then headed back to the quest giver. The quest reward was a very nice blue level polearm. That will be nice to have in BFD come sunday.
Huldu had to leave, and that left just Philly and Kon. Since Kon did not have the flight path at Spinebreaker Hold, I offered to make the run all the way back with him to show him where that was. Philly then called it a night.
Before leaving, though, Philly was able to confirm that I can change our quest night from thursday to tuesday. Kon is commited on tuesdays for the next two weeks, so it will be 26 Feb before we make the change.
2008-02-05 Jovia's Nightmare
Jovia crouches in her quarters, the horror of the nightmare still fresh in her mind. They have gotten worse, since she experienced the first one on the eve of the group's initial foray into Wailing Caverns. For two weeks there has been no word from the Masters, and Jovia has sent no reports on the progress of the hardy group of adventurers who have exceeded all expectations. In the Masters place have been Nightmares.
She has no memory of the content of the dream, but she now fears sleep. She must find a way to reach the Masters. Far back in her mind a small voice whispers, but Jovia tries not to hear it. You do remember a little, don't you?
Jovia shudders. Yes. I remember the Dragon. And something Else.
It is later in the day, and Jovia has somewhat recovered from the morning, although she has been slow at her work from lack of sleep.
Now she wrestles once more with the enslaved imps, who have grown stronger and bolder. Jovia now must spend precious time undoing their mischief as they pick at and pry loose elements of the spells that bind them. No sooner had she finally freed Kon from them to rejoin the group, when they managed to snare Brae.
But settling the imps has focused her on the tasks ahead. Best to make a report and hope it will reach a Master's attention. So well has Huldu stated the group's progress and successes, Jovia blatantly plagarizes his guild reports and forwards them on as her own.
Jovia carefully edits out all mention of the appearance of the druid, Jal, however. She is not certain where the young lass fits into the story that grows with each meeting. She showed up at just the right time, and has proven her character and her value. But Jovia is not the trusting sort, and the timing of Jal's appearance bears caution. But even if she is exactly as she appears, Jal's path may not be same as the one GF is on. Jal does not carry the leatherskin scryer's device. Was not Called by the Masters. Which, on reflection, is not necessarily a bad thing, Jovia thought.
Jovia finished up her day doing some research. With the conquest of Wailing Caverns two weeks before, Naralax should have been released from his dreams and begun the process of cleansing the madness from the Caverns. The place remains dark, though, and more recent adventurers have only found death inside that place. Something has gone wrong, and it may actually be spreading.
She doubts her recent nightmares have anything to do with GF's recent conquest of Shadowfang Keep. That particular madness is limited to within those walls and the vicinity of Silverpine. Archmage Arugal is dead, thanks to the GF, but his imposters and the prolific breeding of the worgen won't be ended with that one foray. Yet the real source of danger does not lie there. Jovia needs to learn more.
What is it that stalks this group, and has the power to mask even the Masters view? There is a piece to this puzzle in Blackfathom Deeps. What hint lies in those shattered ruins, now peopled with the naga and the Twilight's Hammer cult? Jovia hopes that the GF can uncover it.
She has no memory of the content of the dream, but she now fears sleep. She must find a way to reach the Masters. Far back in her mind a small voice whispers, but Jovia tries not to hear it. You do remember a little, don't you?
Jovia shudders. Yes. I remember the Dragon. And something Else.
It is later in the day, and Jovia has somewhat recovered from the morning, although she has been slow at her work from lack of sleep.
Now she wrestles once more with the enslaved imps, who have grown stronger and bolder. Jovia now must spend precious time undoing their mischief as they pick at and pry loose elements of the spells that bind them. No sooner had she finally freed Kon from them to rejoin the group, when they managed to snare Brae.
But settling the imps has focused her on the tasks ahead. Best to make a report and hope it will reach a Master's attention. So well has Huldu stated the group's progress and successes, Jovia blatantly plagarizes his guild reports and forwards them on as her own.
Jovia carefully edits out all mention of the appearance of the druid, Jal, however. She is not certain where the young lass fits into the story that grows with each meeting. She showed up at just the right time, and has proven her character and her value. But Jovia is not the trusting sort, and the timing of Jal's appearance bears caution. But even if she is exactly as she appears, Jal's path may not be same as the one GF is on. Jal does not carry the leatherskin scryer's device. Was not Called by the Masters. Which, on reflection, is not necessarily a bad thing, Jovia thought.
Jovia finished up her day doing some research. With the conquest of Wailing Caverns two weeks before, Naralax should have been released from his dreams and begun the process of cleansing the madness from the Caverns. The place remains dark, though, and more recent adventurers have only found death inside that place. Something has gone wrong, and it may actually be spreading.
She doubts her recent nightmares have anything to do with GF's recent conquest of Shadowfang Keep. That particular madness is limited to within those walls and the vicinity of Silverpine. Archmage Arugal is dead, thanks to the GF, but his imposters and the prolific breeding of the worgen won't be ended with that one foray. Yet the real source of danger does not lie there. Jovia needs to learn more.
What is it that stalks this group, and has the power to mask even the Masters view? There is a piece to this puzzle in Blackfathom Deeps. What hint lies in those shattered ruins, now peopled with the naga and the Twilight's Hammer cult? Jovia hopes that the GF can uncover it.
2008-02-04 Shadowfang Keep
Sunday's GF Shadowfang Keep run almost didn't happen.
Philly was anxious to get started (and I'd gone to bed at a decent hour on saturday night for once) and logged in around 5:30am server for the 6am start. Philly puttered about the Undercity for a bit and then headed on foot to the Sepulcher, which is a small horde outpost in Silverpine that is on the way to SFK. Philly still needed a lot of herbs to continue levelling Alchemy, so this would be a chance to collect a few on the way. Philly was the only guildie in game.
Knowing that Kon would not likely be able to make it, Philly checked the "Looking for More" option on the LFG tool. A level 22 rogue was listed as looking for an SFK group. I /whispered him, he was interested, and I told him to standby in case we needed that fifth player. Philly picked some flowers and after awhile, just out of curiosity, I did a /who for the druid who had come along last week. He was in game, and when Philly talked to him said he would be delighted to join us again if we needed him. The druid had been busy. In the week since he entered WC with us as a level 17, he has levelled all the way to 27. Philly let the rogue know that we would not need him this week, and thanked him for waiting.
Our mage finally came in game at close to 6am, and then a couple minutes later in came the pally. Philly was already parked at the Summoning Stone outside SFK. I let folks know the druid was standing by, and we went ahead and invited him. At 6am we were all waiting at the Stone. But no Huldu the warrior. There was some confusion last week as to the start time, so we figured he would be here no later than 6:30am.
About 6:15 his RL friend, the pally, called him at home. No answer. Only half jokingly, the pally said that he might still be asleep.
While we were waiting a bruiseweed node popped into existence down the road from where we were waiting. Philly trotted off, saying that she "Was just skipping off for a bit to pick flowers."
The druid deadpanned, "For me? You don't have to give me flowers." Philly came back with "Ah, but I wanna. You're worth it, ya big bear." When Philly picked the bruisweed and the collection showed up in the party log, the druid added, "Bruiseweed! My favorite!"
A level 62 galloped up to us on his mount, watched us a second, and then proclaimed, "The reason I gathered you all here today . . . " To which we immediately replied, ". . . is to take us through SFK. One at a time!" He laughed and rode off to farm the instance.
No warrior at 6:30. Or 6:40.
The pally went to call his friend again, and we asked the druid if he liked to tank. The druid didn't get a chance to answer, though, because the warrior came in game at that moment. He'd only gotten three hours sleep the night before and had slept right through his alarm clock.
It was close to 7am when the five of us finally entered Shadowfang Keep. The druid at level 27. Philly, and the pally, Arq, at level 25. Huldu the warrior and Brae, the mage, at level 24.
SFK is full of worgen, wolfmen summoned into the world during a battle of human wizards against the undead Scourge. Archmage Arugal commanded the wizards, and did the worgen Summons to aid in the battle. The Worgen weren't much for choosing sides, though, and slaughtered both armies indiscriminately. The battle lost, a maddened Arugal eventually made peace with the worgen and retreated into SFK with them and the remainder of those loyal to him. The Grunt Foundation has been tasked to root out the worgen and dispatch Arugal.
There are eight Bosses, including Arugal himself and his pet worgen, the massive Fenrus the Devourer.
The group made short work of the trash mobs inside the door and quickly came up on the first boss, Rethilgore, a level 20 elite. He lasted maybe ten seconds. That would set the pattern for most of this fight.
SFK offers a few more challenges than the earlier dungeons, with mobs that can Silence healers and tricky pulls that can bring lots of mobs down on the group. We had few problems, however. Brae casually asked Philly if she had "Dispell Magic" shortly into the fight. "Of course," I said, and then noticed my Decursive display lit up like a Christmas Tree. Oops, I'd better get hot dispelling those magic debuffs! We had some exciting moments in the stables handling about a half dozen very mad elite horses (part of the pally quest line), but Philly kept everyone up and killing. Bosses went down nearly as fast as the trash and we tore through the place, pausing only when we encountered a room with the first Son of Arugal. These tougher elites defend almost every room from this point on, and they (with their adds) can wipe the group if not prepared for them.
We were standing at the top of a stairway that headed down and then doubled back into a large room with a lot of mobs meandering about. Make a mistake and we could pull a dozen mobs up those stairs. Huldu pulled mobs like a surgeon excising cancerous growth without ever touching clean flesh. When we got around to the Son of Arugal he was alone, and an easy kill. Many more Sons died, and more bosses fell.
When we faced Fenrus, Arugal himself sends his worgen beast at us (along with four voidwalkers) before retreating back to his high chamber. The non-elite voidwalkers were easy prey and Fenrus barely got in a bite before he went down.
All that was left was Arugal. A vision from Wild disturbed Philly's thoughts. Wild remembered the Arugal battle. He had died just as Arugal fell, and could not make it back from the graveyard before Arugal's body disappeared, and Wild was unable to claim his head. A failed quest, never completed.
Arugal can Stun, and he can teleport himself around the room. This could be a real problem with a group that has three melee DPSers possibly trying to chase Arugal around as he teleports from one side of the room to another. We charged in and started the fight. Philly got off one heal and then was Stunned. I kept banging on the heal buttons waiting for the Stun to clear, and finally got off a Flash Heal with the tank at under 50%. But it didn't really matter. Archmage Arugal fell dead without ever getting a chance to teleport. At least the warrior wasn't faced with running back from the graveyard.
First it was Ragefire Chasm. Then Wailing Caverns. And now Shadowfang Keep has fallen.
The druid went home with a bag full of loot once again. Out of the two dungeons he's run with us he is now wearing eight blues. Eight. Everyone got at least one blue. Philly's was [Feline Mantle], a very nice +int shoulder. The four DPSers finished with almost exactly the same total damage, despite their level differences. Philly did a little damage, but some of the mobs were immune to Philly's fire wand so she mostly just dropped DoTs on them. Philly did 100% of the healing. No one even needed a bandage.
Speaking of levelling, for the first time Philly did not level in the dungeon. Even when the three quests for the dungeon were turned in, I came up just short at 98%. It was easy to push Philly over that to reach level 26, but it means that we are slowing down in our levelling pace as the amount of xp we need continues to grow.
Not sure where we will be questing on thursday. We still have quite a few quests to do in the Hillsbrad Foothills. On sunday, though, we will likely wrestle the next dungeon on our list, Blackfathom Deeps.
Philly was anxious to get started (and I'd gone to bed at a decent hour on saturday night for once) and logged in around 5:30am server for the 6am start. Philly puttered about the Undercity for a bit and then headed on foot to the Sepulcher, which is a small horde outpost in Silverpine that is on the way to SFK. Philly still needed a lot of herbs to continue levelling Alchemy, so this would be a chance to collect a few on the way. Philly was the only guildie in game.
Knowing that Kon would not likely be able to make it, Philly checked the "Looking for More" option on the LFG tool. A level 22 rogue was listed as looking for an SFK group. I /whispered him, he was interested, and I told him to standby in case we needed that fifth player. Philly picked some flowers and after awhile, just out of curiosity, I did a /who for the druid who had come along last week. He was in game, and when Philly talked to him said he would be delighted to join us again if we needed him. The druid had been busy. In the week since he entered WC with us as a level 17, he has levelled all the way to 27. Philly let the rogue know that we would not need him this week, and thanked him for waiting.
Our mage finally came in game at close to 6am, and then a couple minutes later in came the pally. Philly was already parked at the Summoning Stone outside SFK. I let folks know the druid was standing by, and we went ahead and invited him. At 6am we were all waiting at the Stone. But no Huldu the warrior. There was some confusion last week as to the start time, so we figured he would be here no later than 6:30am.
About 6:15 his RL friend, the pally, called him at home. No answer. Only half jokingly, the pally said that he might still be asleep.
While we were waiting a bruiseweed node popped into existence down the road from where we were waiting. Philly trotted off, saying that she "Was just skipping off for a bit to pick flowers."
The druid deadpanned, "For me? You don't have to give me flowers." Philly came back with "Ah, but I wanna. You're worth it, ya big bear." When Philly picked the bruisweed and the collection showed up in the party log, the druid added, "Bruiseweed! My favorite!"
A level 62 galloped up to us on his mount, watched us a second, and then proclaimed, "The reason I gathered you all here today . . . " To which we immediately replied, ". . . is to take us through SFK. One at a time!" He laughed and rode off to farm the instance.
No warrior at 6:30. Or 6:40.
The pally went to call his friend again, and we asked the druid if he liked to tank. The druid didn't get a chance to answer, though, because the warrior came in game at that moment. He'd only gotten three hours sleep the night before and had slept right through his alarm clock.
It was close to 7am when the five of us finally entered Shadowfang Keep. The druid at level 27. Philly, and the pally, Arq, at level 25. Huldu the warrior and Brae, the mage, at level 24.
SFK is full of worgen, wolfmen summoned into the world during a battle of human wizards against the undead Scourge. Archmage Arugal commanded the wizards, and did the worgen Summons to aid in the battle. The Worgen weren't much for choosing sides, though, and slaughtered both armies indiscriminately. The battle lost, a maddened Arugal eventually made peace with the worgen and retreated into SFK with them and the remainder of those loyal to him. The Grunt Foundation has been tasked to root out the worgen and dispatch Arugal.
There are eight Bosses, including Arugal himself and his pet worgen, the massive Fenrus the Devourer.
The group made short work of the trash mobs inside the door and quickly came up on the first boss, Rethilgore, a level 20 elite. He lasted maybe ten seconds. That would set the pattern for most of this fight.
SFK offers a few more challenges than the earlier dungeons, with mobs that can Silence healers and tricky pulls that can bring lots of mobs down on the group. We had few problems, however. Brae casually asked Philly if she had "Dispell Magic" shortly into the fight. "Of course," I said, and then noticed my Decursive display lit up like a Christmas Tree. Oops, I'd better get hot dispelling those magic debuffs! We had some exciting moments in the stables handling about a half dozen very mad elite horses (part of the pally quest line), but Philly kept everyone up and killing. Bosses went down nearly as fast as the trash and we tore through the place, pausing only when we encountered a room with the first Son of Arugal. These tougher elites defend almost every room from this point on, and they (with their adds) can wipe the group if not prepared for them.
We were standing at the top of a stairway that headed down and then doubled back into a large room with a lot of mobs meandering about. Make a mistake and we could pull a dozen mobs up those stairs. Huldu pulled mobs like a surgeon excising cancerous growth without ever touching clean flesh. When we got around to the Son of Arugal he was alone, and an easy kill. Many more Sons died, and more bosses fell.
When we faced Fenrus, Arugal himself sends his worgen beast at us (along with four voidwalkers) before retreating back to his high chamber. The non-elite voidwalkers were easy prey and Fenrus barely got in a bite before he went down.
All that was left was Arugal. A vision from Wild disturbed Philly's thoughts. Wild remembered the Arugal battle. He had died just as Arugal fell, and could not make it back from the graveyard before Arugal's body disappeared, and Wild was unable to claim his head. A failed quest, never completed.
Arugal can Stun, and he can teleport himself around the room. This could be a real problem with a group that has three melee DPSers possibly trying to chase Arugal around as he teleports from one side of the room to another. We charged in and started the fight. Philly got off one heal and then was Stunned. I kept banging on the heal buttons waiting for the Stun to clear, and finally got off a Flash Heal with the tank at under 50%. But it didn't really matter. Archmage Arugal fell dead without ever getting a chance to teleport. At least the warrior wasn't faced with running back from the graveyard.
First it was Ragefire Chasm. Then Wailing Caverns. And now Shadowfang Keep has fallen.
The druid went home with a bag full of loot once again. Out of the two dungeons he's run with us he is now wearing eight blues. Eight. Everyone got at least one blue. Philly's was [Feline Mantle], a very nice +int shoulder. The four DPSers finished with almost exactly the same total damage, despite their level differences. Philly did a little damage, but some of the mobs were immune to Philly's fire wand so she mostly just dropped DoTs on them. Philly did 100% of the healing. No one even needed a bandage.
Speaking of levelling, for the first time Philly did not level in the dungeon. Even when the three quests for the dungeon were turned in, I came up just short at 98%. It was easy to push Philly over that to reach level 26, but it means that we are slowing down in our levelling pace as the amount of xp we need continues to grow.
Not sure where we will be questing on thursday. We still have quite a few quests to do in the Hillsbrad Foothills. On sunday, though, we will likely wrestle the next dungeon on our list, Blackfathom Deeps.
2008-02-01 Hillsbrad Foothills
We had a full five for last night's gathering of the Grunt Foundation. The lock, Kon, does not have his computer operating yet, but was able to borrow the family computer. We started with two level 23s, two level 24s, and Kon at level 22.
The new questing area is the Hillsbrad Foothills. The horde town in that area is Tarren Mill, and that's where we all assembled. Philly and Brae (who did the quest collecting this time as Arq is not familiar with the area) were the only two who had gotten the flight path for the town. We waited for the others at the Mill, and when Kon trotted into town we asked him to Summon the others. After doing the Summons, Kon mentioned that those were his first ever. I couldn't help but poke a little fun at Brae by mentioning that last sunday in WC he had given Philly her first opportunity to do a rez. These "firsts" continue to bring home that while we all have high level toons on other servers, the race/classes of the characters we are playing here are all new to us.
The early quests in Hillsbrad involve a lot of beast killing. Much of the area is open, grassy fields, blanketed with lions, bears, and . . . no, not tigers . . . spiders. We also tackled the Battle of Hillsbrad quest chain. This is part of the ongoing war here between the horde undead (Yay for undead!) and the humans who "infest" the area. The first quest takes the group to the human town of Hillsbrad (clever name - not) to kill farmers. Undead must really hate farmers, because over several quests droves of them will die and bloody their own fields. There are two named farmers, Ray and Getz, we must kill. After killing the necessary numbers of farmers, we took up residence in a barn we were sure is where at least one of the named farmers would spawn. After an endless wait and killing innumberable respawning unnamed farmers, we got bored and decided the best way to find the named farmers was through process of elimination. We killed everything and everyone, even the cows in the field (which could be skinned, but Philly did mention she was glad she wasn't Tauren).
The named farmers were soon discovered and dispatched. In the second battle it was peasants we had to dispatch. There are still five more quests in the series we have to do.
There are a number of quests involving invading the battlements of Durnholde, and we got one of those done as well.
We had east coasters who could only stay until 7:30pm server (10:30pm their time) last night, so we only got about five quests done. It was enough to level all of us up by one level, though. We will be going into SFK this sunday with two level 25s and 2 level 24s (although it's possible some of us may level up another notch before then). Kon (level 23) won't be able to make it, though, and we will have to find another stand in.
I took a look at the DPS data from the addon Recap after the run. Since we were just questing everyone was running around tagging mobs and killing things as quickly as possible. I think the mage enjoyed trying to overaggro mobs so the warrior had to chase them. Philly would just stand between them and blast away with her wand. Since everyone was helping with the killing I thought it interesting to compare the damage dealing.
By far the two highest DPS dealers were the mage - and the warrior. They accounted for perhaps 70% of all damage done. I was a little surprised the warrior could match the mage in damage, but he is specced fury and was for sure in full DPS mode. Also surprising was that the warlock's damage was no where near those numbers. He had his succubus out most of the night. I had recap set to include pet damage with the pet owner, and thought the damage would be higher. In fact, in terms of damage per second, Philly was actually slightly better than the lock, although the lock had slightly more total damage. Philly, doing nothing but wanding for damage, shouldn't be out DPSing a warlock. Will have to read up on locks and see if I can help him out a bit.
The data is based only on what Philly's recap recorded, so it's likely that not all damage dealt by the others got recorded if they got too far away for recap to pick it up. Recap is more to look at how well Philly is doing with damage and healing, not as much comparing her to others. But it's still interesting.
I haven't had much luck in convincing the others to use addons like recap, or, more importantly I think, something like Omen or KTH to monitor threat. Other than Philly and Huld (the warrior), none of the others are using anything like that. Well, at least Philly can monitor her threat compared to the tanks.
The new questing area is the Hillsbrad Foothills. The horde town in that area is Tarren Mill, and that's where we all assembled. Philly and Brae (who did the quest collecting this time as Arq is not familiar with the area) were the only two who had gotten the flight path for the town. We waited for the others at the Mill, and when Kon trotted into town we asked him to Summon the others. After doing the Summons, Kon mentioned that those were his first ever. I couldn't help but poke a little fun at Brae by mentioning that last sunday in WC he had given Philly her first opportunity to do a rez. These "firsts" continue to bring home that while we all have high level toons on other servers, the race/classes of the characters we are playing here are all new to us.
The early quests in Hillsbrad involve a lot of beast killing. Much of the area is open, grassy fields, blanketed with lions, bears, and . . . no, not tigers . . . spiders. We also tackled the Battle of Hillsbrad quest chain. This is part of the ongoing war here between the horde undead (Yay for undead!) and the humans who "infest" the area. The first quest takes the group to the human town of Hillsbrad (clever name - not) to kill farmers. Undead must really hate farmers, because over several quests droves of them will die and bloody their own fields. There are two named farmers, Ray and Getz, we must kill. After killing the necessary numbers of farmers, we took up residence in a barn we were sure is where at least one of the named farmers would spawn. After an endless wait and killing innumberable respawning unnamed farmers, we got bored and decided the best way to find the named farmers was through process of elimination. We killed everything and everyone, even the cows in the field (which could be skinned, but Philly did mention she was glad she wasn't Tauren).
The named farmers were soon discovered and dispatched. In the second battle it was peasants we had to dispatch. There are still five more quests in the series we have to do.
There are a number of quests involving invading the battlements of Durnholde, and we got one of those done as well.
We had east coasters who could only stay until 7:30pm server (10:30pm their time) last night, so we only got about five quests done. It was enough to level all of us up by one level, though. We will be going into SFK this sunday with two level 25s and 2 level 24s (although it's possible some of us may level up another notch before then). Kon (level 23) won't be able to make it, though, and we will have to find another stand in.
I took a look at the DPS data from the addon Recap after the run. Since we were just questing everyone was running around tagging mobs and killing things as quickly as possible. I think the mage enjoyed trying to overaggro mobs so the warrior had to chase them. Philly would just stand between them and blast away with her wand. Since everyone was helping with the killing I thought it interesting to compare the damage dealing.
By far the two highest DPS dealers were the mage - and the warrior. They accounted for perhaps 70% of all damage done. I was a little surprised the warrior could match the mage in damage, but he is specced fury and was for sure in full DPS mode. Also surprising was that the warlock's damage was no where near those numbers. He had his succubus out most of the night. I had recap set to include pet damage with the pet owner, and thought the damage would be higher. In fact, in terms of damage per second, Philly was actually slightly better than the lock, although the lock had slightly more total damage. Philly, doing nothing but wanding for damage, shouldn't be out DPSing a warlock. Will have to read up on locks and see if I can help him out a bit.
The data is based only on what Philly's recap recorded, so it's likely that not all damage dealt by the others got recorded if they got too far away for recap to pick it up. Recap is more to look at how well Philly is doing with damage and healing, not as much comparing her to others. But it's still interesting.
I haven't had much luck in convincing the others to use addons like recap, or, more importantly I think, something like Omen or KTH to monitor threat. Other than Philly and Huld (the warrior), none of the others are using anything like that. Well, at least Philly can monitor her threat compared to the tanks.
2008-01-30 GF's Dungeon Plan
With Wailing Caverns completed and the Ghostlands questing area pretty much farmed out, the GF met to discuss where we would go from here. There are several choices for level 20 somethings, and given the pace at which we are levelling, we will probably skip some areas as we will level past their usefulness before we get there.
We sketched out the following plan, which we'll revise if needed as we go along.
The focus of the GF is instances, so our questing areas should coincide with the order in which we want to tackle the dungeons available to us.
Shadowfang Keep (18-22 recommended level) - We decided that this will be the next instance we attempt, probably as early as this coming sunday. SFK is in Hillsbrad Foothills, south of the Undercity and Silverpine areas, where we will quest thursday night. SFK is similar in mob levels to WC, and it is not as long. However, the mob pulls are more complicated and the end boss, Arugal, is one of the toughest bosses a group will ever face at this level. We should be ready for it, though, and the rewards there are very much worth going after. There are only three dungeon quests to collect, but in addition, this is where Arq needs to start getting his paladin quests done.
Blackfathom Deeps (22-24) - BFD is next on our list. This dungeon is in Ashenvale, on the other continent and north of Orgrimmar. We may continue to quest in HIllsbrad Foothills for a week if we feel the quest rewards are worth it. Then we'll shift to Ashenvale. I recall BFD as being a lot of fun. A relatively short instance with several interesting quests. There are 6 dungeon quests, and more pally quests.
Razorfen Kraul (24-27) - Like Hillsbrad, we may need to spend an extra week in Ashenvale before moving back to the Barrens and RFK. For some reason I didn't like this dungeon. Maybe it was because the quests require carrying around a whole lot of stuff, or the layout. Or that it took several tries with several groups before Wild got everything I needed done in there. Hopefully it will be more fun for Philly. Questing will be in the Barrens, and perhaps in Stonetalon Mountains, which is where a lot of the Barrens quests lead to. But we may skip Stonetalon depending on where we are level-wise.
The above should take us a minimum of three weeks, but more likely 5-6 weeks, to get done. It will depend greatly on the continued attendance of everyone, and how much back tracking we will have to do to get Kon up to speed when he gets back.
On the horizon could be Gnomeregan, which is in the alliance zone of Dun Morogh and which I've never been in. And then Razorfen Downs (a sometimes forgotten or ignored instance right next to RFK) and Scarlet Monastery.
We sketched out the following plan, which we'll revise if needed as we go along.
The focus of the GF is instances, so our questing areas should coincide with the order in which we want to tackle the dungeons available to us.
Shadowfang Keep (18-22 recommended level) - We decided that this will be the next instance we attempt, probably as early as this coming sunday. SFK is in Hillsbrad Foothills, south of the Undercity and Silverpine areas, where we will quest thursday night. SFK is similar in mob levels to WC, and it is not as long. However, the mob pulls are more complicated and the end boss, Arugal, is one of the toughest bosses a group will ever face at this level. We should be ready for it, though, and the rewards there are very much worth going after. There are only three dungeon quests to collect, but in addition, this is where Arq needs to start getting his paladin quests done.
Blackfathom Deeps (22-24) - BFD is next on our list. This dungeon is in Ashenvale, on the other continent and north of Orgrimmar. We may continue to quest in HIllsbrad Foothills for a week if we feel the quest rewards are worth it. Then we'll shift to Ashenvale. I recall BFD as being a lot of fun. A relatively short instance with several interesting quests. There are 6 dungeon quests, and more pally quests.
Razorfen Kraul (24-27) - Like Hillsbrad, we may need to spend an extra week in Ashenvale before moving back to the Barrens and RFK. For some reason I didn't like this dungeon. Maybe it was because the quests require carrying around a whole lot of stuff, or the layout. Or that it took several tries with several groups before Wild got everything I needed done in there. Hopefully it will be more fun for Philly. Questing will be in the Barrens, and perhaps in Stonetalon Mountains, which is where a lot of the Barrens quests lead to. But we may skip Stonetalon depending on where we are level-wise.
The above should take us a minimum of three weeks, but more likely 5-6 weeks, to get done. It will depend greatly on the continued attendance of everyone, and how much back tracking we will have to do to get Kon up to speed when he gets back.
On the horizon could be Gnomeregan, which is in the alliance zone of Dun Morogh and which I've never been in. And then Razorfen Downs (a sometimes forgotten or ignored instance right next to RFK) and Scarlet Monastery.
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