Love is in the Air
Feb 7th
When the festival started up last night, midnight, server time, I ran around wondering what the heck I needed to do. I couldn’t find a guide as everything has been changed, and so I thought I’d throw a basic guide out there to help you get your achievements and whatnot. I’ve listed the max level Horde quests and such, though everything is basically the same, you can check here, or here (also includes a boss strategy), for any differences in level or faction.
Everything you need this year can be bought with Love Tokens from vendors in each major city, which you can get from doing the various daily quests (Crushing the Crown, giving bracelets to all 4 leaders, and spraying 10 people with perfume) or handing in Lovely Charm Bracelets at the vendors, the same way you change one type of Emblem to another.
The best place to get Lovely Charm Bracelets would have to be doing Battle Before the Citadel, just keep running over the foot soldiers, or the constantly spawning dwarves in Ulduar, grab a siege engine and sit there as they come to you, and you shoot. Killing things gives you Lovely Charms, 10 of these makes a bracelet. Remember to hand these into faction leaders first though, those quests will award you with 5 Tokens.
Daily Quests
These will give you 5 tokens each, that’s 30 tokens a day purely from the dailies (I have only included the Horde Gift dailies at the moment, though it is the same for Alliance, 1 bracelet daily for each faction leader).
- A Gift for the Warchief – give Thrall a bracelet.
- A Gift for the Banshee Queen – give Sylvanas a bracelet.
- A Gift for the High Chieftain – give Cairne a bracelet.
- A Gift for the Regent Lord of Quel’Thalas – give Lor’themar a bracelet.
- A Perfect Puff of Perfume – Spray 10 people with the provided perfume, make sure they don’t already have a heart above their head. You can find this quest in Orgrimmar or Undercity. (For Alliance, there are 2 quests. A Cloudlet of Classy Cologne from Stormwind. Bonbon Blitz from Ironforge. They both work the same way.)
- Crushing the Crown – Run in, tag 5 mobs, and use the item provided to destroy the wagon.
Achievements
You’re going to need for the meta:
Charming – 120 Lovely Charms to make 12 bracelets.- Flirt With Disaster – 1 Handful of Rose Petals, a pile of alcohol to get you completely smashed, and some perfume. Alliance.
- Sweet Tooth – These 4 candies are obtained in Box of Chocolates, which you can buy for 10 tokens. The candies are tradeable too.
- Shafted! – 10 Arrows will be another 10 tokens. Just shoot people who don’t already have a Peddlefeet following them around.
- The Rocket’s Pink Glare – 10 Love Rockets is another 10 tokens. The easiest way to do this is to keybind the Rockets to 1 (or anything else if you prefer), find an empty patch of floor, and spam 1 and click the floor until you get the achievement.
- Nation Of Adoration – You complete these by simply doing the 4 daily quests to give a Charm Bracelet to the 4 faction leaders. Alliance.
- Fistful Of Love – There are 11 class/race combinations you need to shower with Rose Petals, plus the 1 Handful you need for Flirt With Disaster, so buy 15 Handful of Rose Petals for 6 tokens and hang around in Dalaran.
- Be Mine! – A Bag of Candies costs 2 tokens, you can get lucky and get them all in one bag, or you might not. These candies are also tradeable.
- Dangerous Love – For this you need to complete the holiday quest chain which for Horde is from the goblin near the Orgrimmar bank, you should find him on your minimap. For Alliance, it’s in Stormwind.
- I Pitied The Fool – Buy Love Fools for 10 tokens each, and in each place listed, get it out, target it, and /pity. These are a one time use thing (as I found out in an ICC raid.. oops) so you will need 50 tokens for all 5, and make sure you are inside each area listed.
- Lonely? – You need a Buttermilk Delight from the Box of Chocolates, in Dalaran, sit at a Picnic Basket with somebody (10 tokens, though you can use somebody else’s) and eat the Buttermilk Delight.
- My Love Is Like A Red, Red Rose – Loot a Bouquet of Ebon or Red roses from any of the following: Maiden of Grief in Halls of Stone, Prince Keleseth in Utgarde Keep, or Prince Taldaram in The Old Kingdom. Personally, I think that Utgarde Keep normal mode will be the easiest, you won’t need a full group for it.
Extras, not for the meta, but if you like achievements:
- Tough Love – Kill the seasonal boss in Shadowfang Keep. As usual, it is a daily quest which you can summon once a day per character. You pick it up inside Shadowfang Keep, no pre-quest necessary.
- Lovely Luck Is On Your Side – Gain a Lovely Black Dress from a Lovely Dress Box, which are 20 tokens each.
- Perma-Peddle – Buy for 40 tokens.
Feat of Strength:
- Big Love Rocket – This mount drops from the seasonal boss.
The Boss
Everybody loves a good seasonal boss.. Maybe not, but here is a list of his drops.
- 5 necks, the exact same as the Emblem of Conquest necks.
- Big Love Rocket
- Toxic Wasteling
- Forever-Lovely Rose
- Vile Fumigator’s Mask
- The Heartbreaker
Get Lich or Die Tryin’
Feb 5th
I found this posted on WoW Ladies on LJ the other day and I found it hilarious! So I thought I’d share. Enjoy! (Beware, contains rap.)
Changes and Decisions
Feb 4th
I’ve been running around hoping to get a Death’s Choice or Deathbringer’s Will for so long (not gonna happen if I’m not doing 25 mans, I know!) that I didn’t stop to think that perhaps the Whispering Fanged Skull could possibly be an upgrade on my Greatness Card. I ran the numbers through Female Dwarf (I don’t have access to Excel, and I don’t like Open Office, this is why I can’t use the spreadsheet) and found it to be a roughly 100 dps upgrade if I replaced Greatness with the Skull. I actually took this trinket for Survival, as the Runestone isn’t going to be much use as a Survival hunter, so it’s been sat in my bank for a couple of weeks, I felt a little stupid!
While I was there, I checked a few more things. Would it be worth switching my Chimera Shot glyph to the Steady Shot glyph? I’d seen a few Marksman hunters doing this. If I need to use the hit talent as Marksman, why was I using Improved Barrage instead of Improved Steady Shot in an Arcane Shotless spec? Little things like that I’d neglected to check before, as it turns out, I had a few changes to make. Sometimes on a boss fight my fps will drop to about 4, mostly just high AoE fights, Razorscale is one with all the fires on the floor. Currently, our internet is lagging, has been since Monday afternoon. My latency ranges from 120ms to 4,000ms, with people teleporting around, my shots having to be queued while the game freezes for 10 seconds at a time, it actually makes me glad I’m not currently raiding.
So, I’ve hopefully upped Fae’s dps by a little, though there lies another question, another decision.. Do I transfer my hunter? When the latency is better, I’d love to be able to raid 25 man instances again, and I quite miss Terenas Alliance, but I don’t want to reroll again, Fae is my main. So, it would have to be a transfer – faction change deal, and I want to do it because I want to move over, NOT because some smelly druid is pestering me to /glares at Elsen. The decision might possibly be the right one, but I have to choose the right guild for me too. I’ve already decided what race she would be, come on, female Draenei are too awesome.
Dranosh Saurfang (the Younger)
Feb 3rd
“The son is the father.” – Farseer Corhuk.
Dranosh Saurfang, the son of Varok Saurfag, also sometimes known as Saurfang the Younger. His name, ‘Dranosh’, means ‘Heart of Draenor’ in Orcish. Although his mother is not known, she is mentioned in Icecrown. His father says that he made a promise to his mother before she died, that he would leave Outland alone and leave Dranosh untainted.
We first meet him in Nagrand near the Sunspring Post, set out to seek revenge after a Murkblood raid on his home. However, it doesn’t go so well and he gains severe injuries, as well as being only one of a handful of survivors. He decides to go through the Dark Portal to find his father and follow in his footsteps.
Upon meeting his father in Northrend, he is given one of the highest tasks, his father knowing he was the only one who could keep a level head, that he was worthy enough, so he also gave him his armour. This task was to head to the Wrathgate for battle. He sadly fell to Frostmourne just before Putress betrays them, releasing his plague.
Of course, having fallen to Frostmourne, his soul is taken by the Lich King, and he becomes Deathbringer Saurfang. Guarding the Citadel from any champions who may seek to enter. After the Gunship battle, depending on your faction you will meet with differing introductions and endings to the fight, needless to say, the final result, for either faction, was possibly the saddest moment in WoW. The father carrying his son’s body for burial.
A Comment on Recent Drama
Feb 2nd
Today I was going to do my other Saurfang post (I know I never promised it to you guys, but I am doing now, it’s in my drafts waiting to be written), however, I’ve noticed an incredible amount of drama coming from left, right, and centre at the moment and I think there might be something behind it. The Trial patch. Yes, I think it’s still affecting people. After that abysmal joke of an instance, people became too tired to particularly care about the game anymore. Really, after that patch, we needed Icecrown to be something really spectacular, and so far… is it anything special? Without the necessary, “Whey! Icecrown! Fun times!” Going around, people seem to be growing tired again. Forgetting to think about other people before they act, and this is causing an immense amount of drama. I have days I really wish I could raid again, I miss raiding in a fun, easy going guild. This isn’t one of those days, this is the one where I’m bloody glad I’m in a quiet guild that doesn’t have space for drama, or the people for it.
The biggest problem is that I really would like to get back to raiding. I can’t see a guild recruiting who doesn’t have its’ share of drama and I know full well, if I transferred to join a guild, no doubt there would end up being drama. Drama causes stress. What’s the point in using a game to de-stress, when it just adds to the anxiety? So yes, this is why I’m currently in 2 guilds on my main server. One an alt guild which is usually empty, and the other a quiet mostly social guild, who do raid, but it’s 10 mans and they’re struggling to make space for all of the people who want to join.
Okay, I lied, that’s not the biggest problem. The bigger problem is actually that almost all of my ingame friends are in raiding guilds, and I can see the drama is getting to them big time. There’s so much selfishness and general dickwaddery floating around that I’m not quite sure how to help anymore. Some days I’m so tempted to pull a few of them aside and just explode, I’m tired of the people I care about being upset, stressed, and annoyed by other peoples’ ignorance. I don’t know all of the people causing the problem, so in a lot of cases I would sound like a random drama-seeker. I just can’t stand seeing friends upset. That wouldn’t really solve anything though.
How does the selfishness connect to the boredom? Simple. People want to get something out of their ‘boring’ game time. So they’ll ninja, be corrupt, act up, anything, just to make the game more interesting, thus ruining everybody else’s game time. Well ladifuckingda. If there is a guild out there, in which every member can be laid back, easy going, have fun, remember that it’s a game and there are people behind the avatars, whom they really should at the very least be civil to, who is able to kill stuff, and would like to give a loving hunter a home, please let me know. These days I don’t hold very high hopes.
PS. If you type in ‘drama guinea pig’ to Google, one of the images is Brian Blessed! What does this mean?!
PPS. Yes, I got the meme wrong. Yes, I am ashamed of myself.
And Then There Was Mage
Feb 1st
Of course, I am a fickle person, suddenly something became shiny.. I’m very easily distracted. Meet my mage. The first blood elf I created. On the first day of TBC. She’s level 26 and I feel like I’m levelling an antique. It’s fun and I can’t believe in the past 3 years I haven’t levelled it yet.
A little about her name first, Twylite. This dates back to when I was doing my A levels (post-compulsory education, pre-university, for the non Brits reading). I was an avid English Literature geek and one of our English teachers decided to go to London for this Blake walk thing. In the morning we went to one of the art museums, which was semi-boring but at the same time I had some awesome friends with me who made the whole trip much more interesting. Halfway through the day, one of the other students was holding the map with the walk route on it, the tube went past, the map was sucked under onto the track. So for the rest of the day, a few of us went off to another museum, a modern art museum, with huge slides and strange things like that. Walking back across the Millenium bridge, I could see St. Paul’s Cathedral, by the light of twilight, the sun had just gone down and I commented how that was my favourite time of day because it’s so beautiful. I decided this would be the name for my mage then.
I wanted to make my first blood elf a mage because it was a class I hadn’t tried yet, everybody and their dog would be making blood elf paladins, which was a class I wanted to make, but when it had settled down a little, I basically chose mage because it would be different. At this point, my main was my undead warlock so I had no plans to reroll, however I got to about level 20ish and made a blood elf priest, which I levelled and made my main. My mage was left around this level for that long.
Saturday night I had an urge to play her, so I logged in, headed to Hillsbrad, and did a couple of random dungeons. I loved it. The mage class feels comfortable, which I’ve only ever felt with hunter and priest. Though, I’m starting to think I should level my 65 druid first, she’s so close already and I could use a herb/alchemist. Also enjoy the feral and tree dual speccing, kitty for questing, tree for instancing. Of course, my first priority at the moment is Loremaster, though it goes to show how much of an altaholic I am doesn’t it.
The Week #12
Jan 31st
I’m going to come straight out with it, this post is filler. I obviously played my warrior a little. I played the Auction House a bit. Bought a Traveler’s Tundra Mammoth, seeing that afterwards I had 4,000 gold server wide, I bought a pile of raw gems, cut them, sold them for more. Used up a few mats in my bank, Emblems lying around, and bought a few mats to make a couple of things with leatherworking which I resold for a huge profit. After a week, I was back upto about 12k gold server wide. I’ve now gone back to my lowbie mage alt, and I’m semi flirting with the idea of faction changing and transferring Fae when I’ve finished Loremaster, but I don’t know yet. I do miss Terenas Alliance though. Dan also bought me the Gundrak Hatchling and Elwynn Lamb this week, so I’m now upto 101 vanity pets!
I’ve been reading books a lot again this week, finished one and I’m onto the next in the series. I’ve kept up on my reader to an extent, but not enough to really warrant the major link love, which by the way I have played around with my blogroll, tidied it a little, added a few new blogs who weren’t previously there. I also wanted to link to more characters, so I finally did something with my characters page, there’s a link in the WoW tab above, and beneath the other armory links in my sidebar.
For now, have a look at Aphroditi’s warlocky wallpapers, I love them to bits!
A bit of machinima I spotted on WoW.com this week, but it will get stuck in your head so watch at your own risk: I Kissed An Orc.
I’d also like to add a goodbye to Saresa, we’ll miss you, of course, but hope that stepping away will be a positive step. Good luck :)
The Beginnings of a Warrior
Jan 30th
That warrior I mentioned last Sunday? Yeah, she’s level 23 now, very close to 24, and I’m loving it. I started her last Saturday evening when I was a little bored, and I figured what the heck! “I’ll go see who’s around on Terenas, Zal and Els are sometimes around though I can’t remember her paladin’s name..” It took me a while to think of a name, and Briella was the best I could come up with. Most of the names on these name websites are crap, really, so I shoved some letters together and formed a word. That’s how most of my names were formed.
Spoke to Pieces and Zal for a lot of the time, and oh, I took candle. I took a lot of candle. No, not like that you bunch of pervs. Around level 7, Zal decided he was bored and would pick me up in his motorbike and drive me around, so I grabbed 2h Axe training, a couple of greens from the Auction House, and hugged some dead Horde butt. Seriously, who raids Ironforge at 8pm on a Saturday evening, on a Full population server which is very heavy on the Alliance side? Picked up Alchemy and Herbalism and ran off back to Elwynn, I think I got to level 11 before I decided to head off, I love heirlooms, can’t believe I originally planned to level without them.
Since then I’ve been questing and chatting. The usual Westfall, Redridge and such. Though I’ve been trying the low level LFD tool. I love the loot bags, these are entirely new to me, I was totally expecting to be given spell power and spirit items, though I’ve got a of the Bandit cloak, and of the Bear mail belt. Pretty nice! I discovered that the heirlooms I’m using (please ignore the PvP trinket, it’s a bit of resilience in an empty slot, I know I don’t need it as a human, shush), especially the yummy axe, cause a lot of threat, so I struggle to DPS instances.
I decided to try my hand at tanking. Picked up the 1h axe from Deadmines and a shield from a warrior quest.. really.. “Walk into that cave.” Alliance warrior quests are a joke. The level 10 orc warrior quest is to kill a few Thunder Lizards, the level 10 human warrior quest is to beat up the guy next to the quest giver a bit. Pulling the tangent back, I did okay. I kept an eye on the healers’ mana, let people drink, taunted loose mobs away, kept some decentish AoE threat. My only qualms are with rage generation, auto attack (why isn’t it automatic when something hits you?!), and people with, or sometimes without, heirlooms, who then think they are better than group mechanics and will continue to pull ahead, not let you gain any threat on the mobs whatsoever, before they open fire. I know this is nothing new, but despite this I did okay.
There was a group.. I got into a Shadowfang Keep group, as tank, the mage wouldn’t give the ret paladin water because the paladin was Swedish, and the paladin kicked up a bit of a fuss so to speak. I got bored of the arguing, and when the paladin pulled several mobs and ran into the group with them I gave in and left. Joined the next group specifically as DPS, I didn’t sign up as tank I didn’t want to. The same paladin was there telling me to tank. I’d heard of fake tanking, a class with the ability to tank will sign up as a tank with no intention of tanking, and force it on another group member, who will have to tank to get through the instance. I don’t take being told what to do so well and left them to it, like I wanted to do Wailing Caverns anyway.
My last warrior got as far as 27 before something shiny came along and she ended up being deleted to make space on the server for a new alt. All in all, it is a fun class and I hope my tanking skills, and rage generation, pick up a bit soon. I suppose dual-spec is going to help immensely.
Varok Saurfang (the Elder)
Jan 28th
“I am Saurfang. Brother of Broxigar. You know me to be the Supreme Commander of the Might of Kalimdor. An orc – a true orc warrior – wishes for one thing: To die in the glory of battle against a hated enemy. Some of you have fought in battles. Peace has been with us for many years. Many years we sat idle but many years we battled. In those years – where strife the land and Legion and Scourge sacked our homes, killed our families – these insects dwelled beneath us. Beneath our homes – waiting. Waiting to crush the life from our little ones. To slay all in their path. This they do for their god. And for our gods? We defend. We stand. We show that as one. United. We destroy. Their god will fall. To die today, on this field of battle, is to die an orcish death. To die today is to die for our little ones. Our old ones. Our… loved ones. Would any of you deny yourselves such a death? Such an honor?”- addressing the Might of Kalimdor during the Second War of the Shifting Sands.
High Overlord Saurfang serves as the Supreme Commander of the Horde. He is the brother of Broxigar, who died trying to stop Sargeras, and was the only known creature to wound the Dark Titan. He is also one of the orcs who drank from the blood of Manneroc.
He is currently found helping the Horde forces in Icecrown Citadel, though has previously stood in Orgrimmar, and was Supreme Commander during the Second War of the Shifting Sands.
Along with Garrosh Hellscream, Varok Saurfang is one of Thrall’s most trusted advisors. When news of the Wrathgate tragedy reached Thrall, it was Varok who reminded him that it is his duty to lead his people.
A few facts you should remember about this particular orc:
- Every night before he goes to bed, Sargeras checks under his bed for Saurfang.
- Archavon is Saurfang’s Pet Rock
- Saurfang does not have to wait for Arthas to come in CoS timed. The prince will run like hell.
- The real reason the Eastern Kingdoms and Kalimdor split is because that was the day Saurfang cut his very first birthday cake. Afterwards, Saurfang decided that Thrall should cut the cake instead.
- Saurfang once killed 53,297 zombies with a single cleave attack.
The Week #11
Jan 24th
I went back to Fae this week, started on her dailies again and did her weekly. I realised I had missed it so thankfully, no danger of me dropping hunter any time soon. I’ve been incredibly tired so I can’t remember much of what I have done, apart from my achievement points have gone up to about 6,900, and Jaedia the warlock has picked up a bit more gear (and discovered why her DPS was so low all the time, nothing to do with her imp.. nope.. what? Okay, it might have been on passive for a while but ANYWAY).
Also, I don’t know if any of you remember my little project? Well, yesterday I realised, the only race I quite like but don’t have a high level character of this race, is female human. The racials are awesome too. So I traded over the heirlooms from my level 8 draenei, picked out a new name, and made Briella. I also got her to level 11 and it’s fun! It’s a new class which previously I only reached level 27 with. I’m almost tempted to try tanking.. almost. Well, you may notice a few differences. I’ve given up on the idea of not helping her out with money and items, and just got on with it. I think I’ll be more likely to level and enjoy playing her.
Another thing I did this week was read more. Go ahead and mock, but I’m reading the Twilight series which I got for Christmas, and I’m enjoying it. This has actually reduced my blog reading time, which I realised this morning. I’ve bookmarked a few posts which I’m going to share.
I actually fell in love with this post of Pike’s. Weezer are awesome, and the images match the song well. Had to share.
I haven’t raided in a few weeks, so I haven’t seen the fights myself, but Rilgon’s Putricide guide is awesome. I equally love Morynne’s Icecrown guides.
Brangwen at Non Elitist Raiding Diary has posted an interesting topic this week about declining applicants based on age. Some very good points raised and it made me think a little, it’s not necessarily a topic I’ve thought about before.
If you’ve ever wondered what Tirion is yelling about in Icecrown, but didn’t have chance to stop and read it, you’re in luck, Arioch has come to the rescue. Now you can read lore without worrying about wiping on the trash.
