Peter's Blog

Whee google have enabled imap in my gmail account. Maybe I will do something about the 2016 messages in my inbox. Or maybe not.

I've got 5260 messages in all, taking up 347Mb of my 4536M of space.

I only delete spam.

Sorry

No blog yesterday. Personal reasons.

Azshara Will Have to Wait

Was planning on hitting Azshara with a vengeance but didn't have enough bullets. Searched Darnassus, nothing. Went to Azshara flight point, nothing, Emerald Circle in Felwood, nothing, Astranaar, nothing. Damn Night Elfs and their bows. In the end I parked Mae in an Inn and got the auction alt to buy some in Ironforge and mail them to her.

While in Felwood she did the first quest to kill the bear things. Was easy apart from groups of other players killing the same bears. At racing to kills the hunter does have a nice advantage: instant cast multishot!

Next morning and the postman brings 2000 bullets so off to insert them into monsters at high speed. However, a guildie wants help killing naga in STV. I sent the paladin there and it was easy killing level 43 naga with a level 64. I was slightly annoyed how long it took though, I got the feeling Mae could kill them faster. With a two hander the problem is the slow swings: it takes at least two swings which is seven seconds.

Finished off by killing King Bangalash. Oddly enough it didn't feel like I was killing Mae's old pet KB it was just another mob.

53 with a Bullet (2000)

Back in Azshara it only took mae ten minutes to hit 53 and she immediately took her Shell Launcher Shotgun out. Whee, killing level 49's in about 12 seconds. Awesome it was and I'm fairly sure she could kill them faster than Pooky. I spent a couple of hours running round the ruins killing naga and ghosts, much fun to be had and easier grinding than the Blood Elves. Persistant inventory problems though as she had to pick up quest items and also got six green drops while she was there, mostly cloth armour crap: she found three rare spawns, including one (Lady something, a pink Naga) twice. Cloth Armour, there's another oxymoron.

To compound the inventory problems the Naga were dropping clams and I decided to collect Zesty Clam Meat to work on cooking skill. This means first finding a space for the clam shell, them opening the clam shell, then finding space for the pearls and things that drop. I was having to destroy Black Pearls. I kept Golden Pearls as they were worth 1g each as vendor trash.

I stopped collecting clam meat once I had two stacks of it. One can only eat so much clam chowder.

Riding into the Sunset

Another evening on the laptop. Decide to spend it gathering more flight points so rode Mae up to northern Felwood and on to Winterspring. She had already killed enough rival bear things to appease the Timbermaw bear things so she could use their tunnel. Nice to get into Winterspring, my favourite area for Pooky. Mae found it a little tough though, the level 55's take longer to kill and agro was a problem, although I later discovered this may be because I had neglected to give Beefy Growl rank 6. Still found lots of nice herbs there. Got the flight paths and went back to questing in Felwood.

Now have all the useful Azeroth flight points except for the plaguelands and Silithus where Mae hasn't been yet.

Lucky Mae Day

Early start, nice Blizzard were doing their 'rolling restart' thing so the servers were up on a Wednesday morn, AND they had told everyone the night before. Had a pure levelling session, following jame's guide. First an ooze killing session, getting twelve ooze samples in jars. Once I had the jars full I decided to kill the remaining oozes, both for the XP and because there may be the faint chance of a Disgusting Oozeling. I wasn't really intending to grind for one of these since I had read that it can take hours. I couldn't believe it when I got one, I was shocked. Mae has been so lucky with these rare pet drops! I don't think I've ever seen one, they actually give a debuff when they are active so people don't tend to run around with them. I've put it on the auction house for 150g, if it doesn't sell I might try it myself out of curiosity.

More questing, killing Jadefire guys and Satyrs. One death against the Satyrs, mainly through shadow steathy adds. Pooky had similar problems with these guys so just one death is good. Reached the final Boss satyr that I was supposed to kill but first started clearing the guys around him. One of them dropped the recipe for Elixir of the Mongoose, a wonderful hunter pot. Unfortunately I already have it but I thought, cool thats worth 10-20g. I killed the next guy and, bugger me, he dropped the same thing! Could this be 190g worth of drops in one session? Probably not. Could be 50s of vendor trash though.

Deep Pockets

IF I get this money I am highly likely to blow it on BIG BAGS. So sick of inventory problems. 18 slot bags were 20g on the auction house, could buy 80g worth of BIG BAGS and use my old 16 slot bags in the bank, giving Mae LOTS OF SPACE. This would double her farming rate as I wouldn'd spend more time freeing bag space than killing.

Morrow Sorrow

Been doing the Morrowgrain thing whenever I can remember. Got 20 Morrowgrain quite quickly although this morning to counteract the luck Mae was getting crap like Kingsblood which I destroyed as it wasn't worth the bag space. I even set pooky up with some seeds and soil to increase productivity when I am running him, although he's not a herbalist and probably won't do as well as Mae.

Took two batches of Morrowgrain to Darnassus and got 75 rep per ten. Less than 20,000 rep to go for that Epic Saber. If only there was somewhere lucky Mae could get one in a drop.

The rewards from the Morrowgrain also included two 'Cenarian Cache's, packets of goodies. I got all sorts of odd pots including a demonslaying potion, dreamless sleep potion, even a nice agility pot. Some of it like a curse/poison removing pot I later destroyed for the bag space: mae uses stoneshield to remove debuffs and Improved Mend Pet to cleanse the pet.

Hum, now I think about it WHY DIDN'T I USE THE DEMONSLAYING POT ON THE SATYRS. Bah, hindsight.

Best Daddy in the World. Ever

I can now attack an enemy camp while feeding a baby. L33t Dad Skillz. I still need some work on my nappy-changing-while-chain-trapping though.

I succumbed to my temptations and some of these relate to World of Warcraft.

As contemplated in previous postings I have:

• learnt two-handed swords (as well as one-handed and polearms, should these ever be useful) from trainer in Stormwind (whoop me or something in an arms dealer shop in the trade district). Not expensive to learn.
• bought a 'combatant claymore' a big two-handed sword capable of 27 dps. It is VERY nice: peak damages of 250 can kill level 13 creatures in one strike. It is so nice going back to places where I struggled and wiping whole camps of creatures out (very Arnie in Terminator). It cost me 14 gold in the Auction House (AH) but was worth it. With it I am strong enough to raid mogrosh camp (level 20 elite monsters) and gather green items to sell in the AH. It should pay back the investment while providing some fun. The camp has a boss at level 22 with two level 20 minions that I cannot split. These are too tough for me (me level 29) to kill unaided. I still doubt I am in deadmines solo territory but I might try it someday.
• I unlearnt engineering and am power-levelling blacksmithing. I need to get to around level 150 to be able to make things that are useful to myself. So far I am about level 37. Each increase in level involves making something so I have to make 113 more items. Each of these needs materials, say 8 copper bars, so I am going to need a lot of materials. 20 x Copper is 60 silver in the AH so I'll probably do a lot of farming around lock modan. I made lots of copper bracers as they take only two coppoer bars and then destroyed them because they weren't worth selling. Now making bracers is too easy and won't make my level increase. The whole power levelling thing is about efficient use of resources.
• I can already make grinding stones that will sharpen my sword for more damage and also makes it glint. Blacksmithing already more routinely useful to me than engineering was.

When I decided to get the Beast I decided to treat myself to a BIG monitor. I felt the 30inch Dell monitor was too big, even after seeing 30 inch monitors in the apple shop. They also have pretty demanding video card requirements. After a while I decided on a Dell 24 inch, mainly because although it is widescreen, vertically it is still taller than the 19 inch CRTs I am used to. I cherish height more than width and 19 inch widescreen monitors I've seen look too small. Europc were selling the Dell 24 inch cheap (relatively).

It came today and it is pretty breathtaking:

• I set the video resolution to 1920x1200 and there is so much screen space, I have to turn my head to pan from corner to corner.
• It has a built in four port USB hub.
• It has a built in flash card reader (compact, SD etc).
• It does picture in picture: I could have a TV picture in the corner via the svideo input if I so desired (and there would be plenty of screen left).
• I downloaded some 1920x1200 wallpapers and these look amazing. Loaded up picasa and looked at my photo album and whee.
• Height and tilt adjustable
• Screen rotates 90 degrees, should I want about 20 inches vertical height.

May have to start using my glasses at home.