Peter's Blog

Running a Lot

Was in Darkshire and decided I felt like doing the long run down to Booty Bay, mainly to get it out of the way. It's a long run and running isn't my favourite part of the game. Once in Booty Bay I decided to get more running out of the way so I took the boat to Ratchet, ran through the Barrens to the flight point at the top of Thousand Needles, then down to Gadgetzan. These are two of the worst runs in the game without a mount out of the way. Once the flight point at gadget was clocked I went back to Simmering Flats to do all the quests there. It was a good grind, monsters in the range 30-35 and I got a good rhythm up.

I learnt not to Serpent Sting the orange and red mobs (34-35) so that I would have the option of Scattershotting them, although I'm starting to have doubts about the usefulness of Scattershot. It 'confuses' the target for four seconds but this is barely time to get to distance and re-engage the pet before the monster is back on Maezyn. I need to work on it.

I was grinding happily and ran into a level 37 rare spawn basilisk with Maezyn at level 31. I decided to take it on with a long kite. The territory at Simmering Flats is excellent for kiting, wide salt flats with little in the way. I got into a good kite, running with Aspect of the Cheetah and remembering to give it the occasional Serpent Sting and Concussive shot. The main problem I had was I ran out of mana and was having to wait to get enough mana for another shot. I kited the thing through the race guys in the centre of the track but they ignored me. At one stage Beefy regained agro and fought it to the death despite Mend Pet. The thing carried on after me for a couple more laps of the race track but eventually it got bored with chasing and went into evade mode. The fight lasted over five minutes and I only got it to about half health. I'm happy to have survived the fight even though I lost the pet. It would have been great to have killed it. I didn't see it again.

After I did the Simmering Flats quests I hearthed back to Darkshire and did a load of quests in nothern Strangethorn. I was hoping that Scattershot would be good for interrupting the Kurzon Medicine Men's heals but they gave me big trouble. In the end I decided the easiest tactic was to just burn them down with Arcane/Multi shot salvoes and just tolerating their 100% heals.

Now level 33.

Leather

The Simmering Flats mobs yielded about six stacks of leather. Maezyn had picked up a nice plan in Booty Bay for a Gem-studded Leather Belt which was interesting because it was a blue and had an on-use: once an hour it would give and instant heal for about 25% of Maez's total health. This was good enough to save her twice in STV. It's on a seperate timer to health and mana pots and being instant cast it is useful if she is being beaten on (unlike Gift of the Naaru).

Maezyn is 196 Leatherworking and 257 skinning: I'm still enjoying the skinning. Can I get it to 300 before level 40?

She has collected the turtle meat for the Artisan cookery quest but it seems to be restricted to level 35's so she will have to wait a bit longer before developing her cookery further. UPDATE: my memory failed me here, the turtle meat is for a quest in Hinterlands, not Artisan Cookery.

She had a big wool-bandage making session and has got her First Aid to 150. She bought the Expert First Aid book in Stromgarde Keep and I need to remember to visit a trainer to get the basic silk bandage training. She has the other two books to get to level 225. She never uses all the bandages she makes, I only bandage the pet occasionally after a fight to save mana on Mend Pet or on Maezyn in a really hectic fight but it is important to keep the first aid up to scratch as otherwise one is using sub-standard bandages.

Maezyn is now able to mail her linen and cloth drops to Maexyn for tailoring as Maezyn doesn't need them for bandages any more.

Warcraft Atlas

I tried the new Warcraft Atlas but it seems to be a good example of why flash shouldn't be the basis of a web site. It is slow to load and doesn't seem to do anything that could not have been done in static html. You seem to spent a lot of time waiting for decorative animations. Not what I want from a reference work.