Wednesday, November 28, 2007

Numer Two 70, But #1 Character

Well Gawds has been 70 for 5 weeks now. The final push was real quick. I just finished out some of the easier quests in BEM befor heading into Netherstorm for the 68-70 quests. I knocked out a few of the quests. I’ll edit this with the specific area I dinged in someday.

I entered 70 well ahead of the game. I had been trolling the AH for an upgrade to my Helreaver. It was getting much harder to kill things quickly, that usually means its time for a weapon upgrade. I was purusing the AH for a suitable replacement and was decided on the Oathkeeper for the 68+ questing and to take me into Heroics and Kara. Hell a 70 pally guildy had his until last week when he got Gorehowl off of Prince. He’s been 70 since a month after BC….or less. Well I was at 65 when I decided on the upgrade shopping. So into the AH I go and I see a lot of good things…cept they are for 66-68 and not gonna help me. I finally decide to go with a pole arm that had some very nice stats. I asked my guildies for some advice and the concesus was to go with OathKeeper. A guildy even offered to give me one at a tremendous discount. (Yeah for something like that I have no problem paying a guildy.) As I was deciding wether to take him up on the offer I see a spam in /2 for the Hammer of Destiny. Guy wanted 1.2k. So I asked the guild if it was worth that much. Most agreed it was worth more like 800. So I messaged him with the 800g and he said he would take that price if I traded other things for it. (It seems to me now that this guy was an ex-Diablo 2 Player. A lot of transactions in that game revolved around trading items as gold was so easy to come by and items were not soul bound. Lots of times it was gold + item trades. This was the first time I had seen it as an option in WOW. Item for Item, sure. Money for Item sure. Just not both.) Where ever this guy came from it didn’t change the fact that I only had 924g on that character ( yeah others had more) But I was not gonna pay more then 800. I could walk away and not be upset. He would be out 800 he didn’t have. So I tell him I only have the gold and no tradable items as I have been saving for an epic. (True but the real money is elsewhere). He says he will keep me in mind. He spasm his ad 2 more times, I suspect now that some guildes messaged him and offered him an amount lower then the 800, yeah they would do that, cuz in less then 5 minutes he msgs me back. He says he’s having a good day so he was gonna pass on the joy. (If he had giving it to me for 500 that would have been some serious joy). We meet and I hand over the cash, he hands over the Hammer. I then had an epic that is widely said to be the best pre-raid epic weapon. Tell you what, I think they are right. See my priority here? I have a 3 sentence paragraph stating how I got from 65-70, in 3 days mind you, while the weapon gets a huge chunk o space. I am not a lewt whore really, but I am jazzed that I got the hammer. I slapped Savagery on that bad boy as soon as I found a chanter with it learned.

It languished in the bank till I neared 70 then was immediately equipped once I dinged. 114g later I trained all the skills for 69 and 70. I was ready for dungeons…um no. I still needed rep in a few places for the heroic keys.

I spent a great deal of time in Nagrand farming the Obsidian Beads for Consortium rep till I had over 100 of them. I then headed to Netherstorm to crank out the consortium quests that would put me close to honored. It took a bit but after tuning in the beads and quests I managed to earn my key. I also had to work on my Shatar rep but the only way for that was to run TK instances. So I placed that on hold while started my Kara attunement. It took me over the course of a week to get it all done. By the time I was keyed I was honored with KOT(1 Durn FC + BM FC) and pretty well into friendly with Shatar. I still need a few more runs to get me to honored. But one problem, no one wanted to run them. I had the shitiest time putting together a run to any of the TK dungeons.

I was screwing around in Shat when I decided to turn in some signets and tomes to the Scryer people. It turns out that turning in those signets, tomes, fel armaments, and marks of Keal/Sarg, also gives Sha’tar rep. Well shit I didn’t know that. I spent some time farming some up and looked for deals on the AH and /2. Got some major steals from people looking to make some quick cash. After all my wheelin and dealing I got enough signets and tome to make a huge dent in my Scryer and Sha’tar rep. In fact I got my Sha’tar rep to 5999/6000 with all the turnins. That’s where it stopped. Shit. Still needed a rep run. I then decided to put that on hold for a short time so I could run through the quest chain for the arcatraz key which would take a character into Bot and Mech. After I ran through the quests (Btw I soloed the elite demon who held the shard in Netrherstorm, took 3 times though) I put out a call again for a run into Bot and maybe Mech. This was last Saturday and luckily there were guildies about and looking to run some Shar’tar rep up. We blasted through Bot before everyone had to run over to kill Kara. It was cool I dinged honored with the first kill in Bot. I had to wait till Sunday to run Mech. Sunday comes and I get a tell from a group already in Mech. They were at the last boss and needed DPS.

“Are you ret?”
“Fuck yeah I’m a Skull Cracker,” me replies.
“Wanna kill the last boss in mech?”
“Hell fucking yeah!”

We wipe on him the first time but destroy him the second. I got the second frag and made my key at Shat.

I am fucking Keyed for everywhere and all levels. I have run UB and SV heroic. I’ve run Bot and Mech on heroic. I’ve even been in on a disastrous SL heroic. I am loving the heroics on Gawds. Mindkiller has never seen the inside of a heroic. Mindkiller has now become a support character as I grow deeper into the Paladin. I will raid with Gawds like I never did wit Mindkiller. Oh well they both are money makers, and with my one-man guild banker I have no problem storing and selling all the stuff these two can acquire. I think I will have my epic mount money in about a week if I just put a bit of effort into it. It took me 4 months or so on Mindkiller to do that. It will prolly be a total of 2-3 weeks on Gawds.

Thursday, November 08, 2007

Getting there.

I have managed to make it to Nagrand and be well into level 65. I layed the smack down on the remaining Zangar quests up to and including a few rep quest for Sporragar. They had a nice shield I was willing to grind for. It was a bit repetitive but in the end worth it for a blue shield that only cost 15 Glowcaps.

I managed to hit honored with CE while messing around in Zangar and after getting to 64 moved on into Terrokar. I remember all the quests here and picked the ones with the best rewards and exp coupled with the easiest. I also knocked out the Shat welcome quests and picked Scryers just for convienience. Not much to be had from either faction really for a Ret pally. People seem to think the grind to exalted is worth the shoulder enchants, I do not. I chose Scryer cuz you can jump off the top tier and not die, as well as its closer to the FP and I have gotton used to goin to the their bank on Mindkiller. I usually just sell any rep items I get for either faction on Mindkiller. I see me doin the same on Gawds.

I managed to plow my way through the Terrokar quests before heading into Nagrand. Now the real grind begins. I want to clear out the quests here before rolling over to Blades Edge. I had forgotten the grind that is the Nessinwary quests. I’ll still do them since they are good exp and some nice DE stuff. I decided to grind out the ogre chain quests in order to get me a new weapon. Turns out the new weapon has higher dps but isn’t much of an upgrade. Pity, it looks spiffy. I’m not sure I want to waste the mats to slam Savagery onto it to see if it is a true upgrade. I may have to do another search for an upgrade an see what I can find.

As I was questing in Nagrand a call went out over general chat for people to group up and raid Halaa and take it back from the Horde. I ignored it since I was only 65. Then a guildy happened to be in Nagrand, heard the call and asked if any in the guild wanted to come join the fracus. Seems they already had like 20 people in raid waiting to make a move. I sent a wsp and got an invite. I headed over to see whas shaking. By the time I got to Halaa there were 30 people in the raid facing off against 20-25 horde. All the allys were unflagged and the town guards had all been killed. The leader called for everyone to flag in 5 minutes and start the melee. All the horde were just waiting for a fight. Five minutes roll by an we all flag and go to town. I died in 2.3 secs and spent 2.3 minutes walking back. I shoulda just bubbled. I get back and we have pretty much smashed the defence. The battle rages for almost 15 minutes with the horde getting filleted, I managed to hit a few in the few seconds they were live. I got a nice 22 battle tokens. I may actually use them to get some gear too. I saw some decent stoof on the quarter master. No weapons though. I don’t want the mount, not into the horned goat thingy. Some day I’ll spring for the epic flyer on Gawds and start the 12 day march for the Drake. I’m certain I may be able to shave off one day if I get some lucky egg drops. That’s all in the distant future.

I actually logged onto Mindkiller a few times this week to help a guildy with his epic mount quest. The warlock mount quest simply rocks for intencity. The final fight in Dire Maul was chaos, even with 3 level 70s assisting. I can’t imagine 5 level 60’s doing this fight an not failing a few times. We killed everything and the locks were able to keep the artifacts active most of the time. After a bit of a rest the deamon horse spawned and we bitch slapped it. Its owner came after wards and was mighty pissed off that we had kilt his prized equine. We rocked his ass and made him beg for death which, as compassionate people we are, we granted. We had dragged a second lock with in order for him to get his mount quest done too. So both got some nice fiery horses to play with and I got to help out a guildy, and get what used to be some decent lewt for the level. It more then covered the repair bill with a nice little profit.

I have been using another character for AHn stoof from Gawds. It is working real well. I can send shit to him and have him collect then post it. He has already made back the opening allowance I sent him for mail and postin, I might spend a bit of time on Mindkiller mining and send the stuff over for posting as well.