Peter's Blog

More Ghoulie Grinding

Did some research on Wow Wiki about Eastern Plaguelands. I had always thought that there ought to be more quests there than I have found and sure enough, there is a quest giver hidden on the western edge, up the river a ways. He has three quests that involve killing vast numbers of Plague Bats, Carrion Eaters and Plague Hounds. Ideal hunter prey. Eastern Plaguelands is alive with all these things and normally they are an annoyance as they are always in the way but now they were good grinding fodder. Spent a good couple of hours on this, especially the Carrion Eaters (giant maggots) as I had to collect drops of their meat and the drop rate was very low. Did spend time going through the big plague town killing ghouls and exploring the far west of the map. I found Terrordale where the Plagued Swine are, the highest level boars in the game. They are level 60 and I plan to train one when Mae reaches 60. They are smaller than I imagined and not as ugly looking: the gaping wounds on their sides don't gape too much.

Was wandering round and found an odd red blob on the ground that I could click on. Duly clicked and a level 60 elite appeared and killed Tiddle and Mae. Surprise! Ressed and decided to tackle her properly. She killed tiddles and went for Mae. It was very close, the elite was down to a tiny bit of health but she still killed Mae. I really need to learn to kite! Had a third try but messed it up at the start so ran off. I gave up then, I was wasting time and I wanted to get to 60. In retrospect I should have laid a freezing trap ready in case she got to Mae. She was nasty, she gave a debuff that stopped Mae running fast, Mae had to feign death to get rid of her.

Turned in the three quests for a nice 5800 XP each and got a follow up quest to get a hammer from the Undercroft. Went there and clicked on a grave and five guys appeared and proceeded to kill Tiddles and Mae. Not good. Tried again and died again. The problem was the guys would stun tiddles, then overrun Mae. Not much I could do about it.

Two bubbles from 60, how to get there? Grind. Went to Corbin's Crossing and ground Ghouls till bullets were running low, went to Hope's Light Chapel, rearmed and flew to Western Plaguelands. Turned in a quest there but the follow up was a group quest so just ground ghouls in the ghoulie town.

Ding.

Crazy Saber Lady

What more can I say:

It was worth it, all the running around Ashenvale, grinding ghouls, every bullet, every piece of runecloth (and the grinding has yielded eight stacks). She went for the Storm Saber and was glad she did: it's dark blue with lots of shiny metal bits. These screenshots never do justice, this cat is the best.

When the Storm Saber runs it has a big lolloping stride and Mae bounces up and down: it's at the same time fun and nauseating. Please bear in mind, Pooky had a paladin horse for a while, then a standard ram, then Snowy the epic ram and Mae has had her unnamed ram for twenty levels. I'm sick of rams!

When you press the space bar while stationary it does a big roar, if you flip the camera view you can see right down it's throat. The rams rear up on their hind legs. UPDATE: it's not a roar, it's just a yawn. I was playing with the sound turned off so I wouldn't wake the house up.

It's name? Cuddles.

Level 60 Goodies

Bought some pretty pricey level 60 Hunter Training, over 4g a pop! All next ranks but pretty major ones: Arcane shot, Serpent sting and most importantly the 20 second freezing trap: now I have no excuse for not chain-trapping. There was a new thing on offer to dispel 'frenzy' effects on a target but I don't think it's worth having, I prefer to keep blasting.

Still looking forward to 61 where Mae gets Aimed Shot. Tempting to respec for it now and ditch the Beast Within: killed over thiry plague bats and their fear spells weren't so bad that I bothered with the immunity that Beast Within gives.

Attack Power

Some research led me to an interesting discovery: attack power buffs effect Hunter ranged attack power! I had assumed that 'Attack Power' was for melee and 'Ranged Attack Power' was for ranged but it seems an attack power boost will increase the Hunters ranged attack power too. By pure coincidence a random passing paladin gave Mae the Blessing of Might and I watched her dps display as it timed out and it was equivalent to a 10% dps boost.

I was led to all this by the mention of a trinket that you can get in Outlands merely by killing a level 63 elite. It boosts attack power and crit by some ridiculous amount and has low cooldown. It sounds like something both Pook and Mae could do with. According to Thott, Hunters can solo it by kiting the level 63 to the nearby town but that is either BS or beyond me. I probably need to find a guildie to help me. Twice. Pretty please

TBH Mae really needs to learn kiting. Without the pet she is absolutely helpless, it's just pathetic, her melee is simply feeble. She may have reached sixty but she's just starting to L2P.