Level 65 - The Ring of Blood

Even before reaching 64, reaching 65 was the real milestone that I had in mind. Not just because its a nice number, but because it is the minimum level requirement for the Ring of Blood in Nagrand. Admittedly, the amount of XP you get in these fighting rounds converted to gold at max level in addition to the 11g or so that you get regularly is appealing, but the weapons that the quest offers are awesome as well. And I wanted that set of [Battle Mage's Baton] very much.

Upon arriving in Nagrand on Sunday morning I first did the hunters quests. Then I did them again. I realized only when picking up the boss drops from Gutripper that I had forgotten to share the quest with my minions. ARGH! Anyway, I got over it and took it as a refresher to make sure there is a [4] in the quest log ahead of the quest I am doing before doing it. After the hunters quest, I picked up what I could from the Kurenai and the Throne of the Elements. I finished the Ogre chain, need to face Gorok the Usurper now and need to free Corki one last time. All that combined did it and brought to 65.

It was after 1am though so I was not too sure if I would find a friendly guild tank for the arena bouts. I could have messed about trying to make do with the felguards, but from tanking the arena fights myself on my warrior I do know that these guys hit nasty, so my hope on the felguards making it was low. In any case, a friendly feral druid from my guild was willing to help me out after his last BG for the day.

We did the five bouts without fail. Blaire got killed by the warmaul champion, but besides that everything went picture perfect. For constant DPS and constant healing using 'Clique' was awesome. I could click the tank's bar for greater heal while hammering the keyboard for dps. Then I got my new fancy staves as shown in the picture above.

Anyway, time to hit the sack.

Captn, out.

Level 64 - Terrokar Forest and the Bone Wastes

Disguised as orc cultists, I infiltrated the cultist camp just south of Shattrath City. After some spywork utter destruction followed, for the camp, not for me. The most difficult part of the mission was to skirt all wolves and lizards on the way to the camp since all combat action break the disguise. Some horrified cultists escaped, mostly because I could not be bothered to chase them down after my mission was accomplished. The scattered throughout Terrokar Forest, but their warnings were ignored by the minions of Terrok and the blood elves.

I have been massively enjoying my setup while questing in Terrokar. I skipped a number of collection quests, but followed quest chains like the Skettis chain dilligently. The mana bomb thread has been eliminated. The warped peons were spanked. The Bone wastes hold a number of interesting quests, with a high number of kill quests to my delight! The picture here shows the bone dragon after I was done with him. I also dropped the bone worm.

Alas! I no longer 'have' to wear the [Wanderer's Stiched Trousers] as seen on this picture which I took when hearthing back to Shattrath City. I say 'have to' because a quest reward from the Allerian Stronghold has better stats. Which leaves my party looking like shown here. For some reason I really liked the semi-naked looks that the Wanderer's Trousers gave my minions. Maybe the reason has something to do with insufficient fresh air, insufficient cold showers or similar. In any case, the new flashy red pants with white stripes are not bad looking and certainly better in stats. Pants! But I disgress, I shall wrench myself away from this topic to avoid that I look like a child who has just been deprived of his favorite toy.

After all these quests I was level 64! Time to get new spells and grimoires. The pet ability training is also the reason why I have for once no felguards out.
Ready for the hunter quests in Nagrand!

Level 62 - Shrooms!

Giant mushrooms in fact. Zangermarsh has many of those. The quests from Honor Hold, The Temple, the Cenarion Expedition and the Longbears in the Hellfire Peninsula are done. I was not idle in Zangermarsh either, completing all quests with the exception of the eel fillet ones, and the western Cenarion watcher, Sporegar and northern Broken quests.

Just now I got Fel Armor and Molten Armor respectively as well as a new rank in shadow bolt and fire bolt. That should certainly increase the amount of targets that I can insta-gib with one salvo to 98% of my level range.

The quest rewards are equipping my team nicely. If you check the Armory link you will see that most of my crappy items are history now, replaced with Outland quest rewards. Some of these substitutions were gigantic upgrades since I had not worked on improving my characters gear in a focussed way. Knowing that I am trying to level anyway and that the yummy Outland quest items are on the menu made me rather lazy with gear.

Captn out.

Mission: Dreadsteed Accomplished!

"Use: Summons three Dreadsteeds, one Elekk and one Horse. These are very fast mounts." I have to plead guilty to riding about town unnecessarily enjoying the motion. I will post a bit more later, now its dinnertime.

Captn out.

Level 60!

While this exclamation does not carry the weight it did before, I am still happy of having reached this milestone. The very first thing I did was grab an elite elekk for Captn and an elite horse for Alaire and start the Dreadsteed quest for Elaire, Blaire and Dlaire. The picture shows me ready to lay waste to the owl beast population in Winterspring. Not that I have anything against owl beasts, but I need their blood for the quest chain.

I can not wait for the whole party to be elite mount equipped. A whole new cursing speed experience!

In other news, I changed my macro setup from /cast [target=party1target] shadow bolt to [target=focustarget] style. The motivation to finally get this done was a guildmate who wanted to do a Zul'Gurub run for giggles. We could have juggled the groups, but since I will have the same problem with not being able to depend on the group setup for targeting in PvP, I got it done and over with. ZG was fun. there were 11 chars including my five, some of the other six 70. It was past 3am in the morning when we finished, so I ask for your forgiveness for not making any fancy videos or remembering to snap nice pictures. Bat and Snake died.

Back to the Dreadsteed quest now

Captn out.

Level 58 - Outland here I come!

I was literally out of quests. Well, there were a few left, but they were the 'pay this' or 'find me this thing on the other side of the world' or '42232 rare drops on the double types'. So, I headed through the dark portal into the XP rich desolation of the Hellfire Peninsula.

Having already made it to 70 on my warrior and having past the first couple of zones with my hunter the zones themselves were no news to me. However, my warrior was wearing T2 raiding gear and the hunt PvP epics. Doing even the first couple of quests in the eastern part of the Hellfire Peninsula with the mostly green equipped caster team was very rewarding by comparison. New Hat. New Chest. New Staff. New Legs. New neck. New wand. But I am sure I missed something. Oops, yes I did, the overlord trinket. Awesome rewards for me, most of them significant upgrades.

The XP pours in at a faster pace than in the old lands and I am closing the gap from 58 to 60 fast.

New movie clips!

After playing around with them on the weekend, I uploaded two new videos to YouTube today. The first is a collection of things that I did in the Blackrock Depths, with a goof in the fight in the chamber of the Seven and Jailbreak.



The second clip is composed out of a number of nice takedowns with affliction and with demonology after reaching level 50.



Cheers, Captn.

Level 56.2 - Jailbreak!

After the previous attempt at conquering the Blackrock Depths ended at General Angerforge, this time I scored much better. I went in the party a couple of boxes into level 56 with Captn in the lead. What I did accomplish the last time, was getting the Shadowforge Key.

Heading in, I picked up the 'Attunement to the Core' quest and went directly through the garrison to the General's Hangout. It was not much later that I was happy to have survived pulling a bigger corner group with a runner. I need to mention that my Hellfire AoE is not very suited to dealing with Fire Elementals. Luckily enough banish evens the odds, even though I was not prepared to apply it as comfortly in combat as sheep. While there was no single wipe, I did see Captn's 'Spirit of Redemption' too frequently, but I did drop General Angerforge as well as Golem Lord Angelmach on the first go.

Since it did go so well, I did not return to Winsor immediately, but put down Ribbley, the Flame Ambassador and the Spirits of the Seven as well. Then I strolled over the bridge making good use of 'banish' and picked up the core fragements needed for 'Attunement to the Core'.

Then I turned on my collective heels, and started clearing the way around the Ring of Law, then the entry hall, the storage room and the way down to Windsor's cell. After this extensive preparation I revisited Winsor. Unlike the last 3563 times when I was helping others with their Onyxia chain in BRD, I did not have to explain anything, which was just as well. Suffice to say, that the actual Jailbreak escort quest went off without a hitch. Even my trio of felguards kept Winsor's buff until the escort was finished to my joy.

I am now off to Winterspring with a brief stop to do the 'First and the Last' Blightcaller prequest in the Plaguelands.

I did hit the screenshot and fraps buttons and will review the results shortly.

Captn out.

Level 56 - Arcane Brilliance

No longer do I need to use Alaire for four Arcane Intellect buffs, use Evocation and then do the last one. Arcane Brilliance does it all in one go, conveniently with the same one hour running time as Captn's Prayer of Fortitude. Also like the Prayer, it also affects the active pets. Which gives my felguards more stamina and more mana. I am relatively sure that the Demonic Knowledge talent which I have on 3/3 with the effect: 'Increases your spell damage by an amount equal to 15% of the total of your active demons stamina plus intellect.' is not taking into account the active buffs. Pity, but it may have been over the top.

Another nice thing that came my way at level 56 is Demonic Frenzy. This beauty of a felguard ability is described as: 'The Felguard's damaging melee attacks cause a demonic frenzy, increasing attack power by 5% for 10 sec. This effect can stack up to 10 times.' I expected a 5% or 10% effect on average and was already happy. When I tested this, and moused over the buffs the felguards had up, I saw 50% right away. I kinda wish I had that on my warrior!

As for my XP grazing area, I am pretty much done with Winterspring now. High Chief Winterfall bit the dust not just in a random act of rep grinding but as a quest objective. The frost giants in the south for 'Lucky be with you' were a challenge, but no real problem if you watch out. Due to me being sloppy with the soulstones I had a total of two corpse runs while collecting the 50 frostmaul shards for my party. I have not touched the Yeti chain yet, but I fully expect that area to have more bots than mobs, so I am a bit reluctant to start this quest item collection grind fest in competition with Wfkasd, Ekflak, Alkjwe and their pets boat, cat and owl.

In any case, level 56 was well worth it, nice abilities and the tranquility in Winterspring made it a pleasant day.

Level 54 - Where to go?

The quest 'Petty Squabbles' from the Blasted Lands leads to the 'Fallen Hero of the Horde' sponsored demon Razelikh quest chain. After the steps in the Blasted Lands I moved to Azshara and did the a couple of steps there. Then comes the moment where you need to collect 20 Azsharite shards from the cliffs of southern Azshara. For me that meant 100 shards. I bit my teeth together and collected them, got the weapons made by Galvan the Ancient in Stranglethorn and then got my teeth kicked in by Grol. After I had prepared all five anti-demon weapons to be ready for use I overcame him - but not his sister conspirateur Sevine.

While in Azshara, I heard a taunt from Avalanchion, the Earth part of the Elemental invasions that targets Azshara, Winterspring, Un-goro and...no idea. Anyway, I went to go and look for him. It brought a smile to me when I dropped him and his sidekicks. I waited a bit with healing, just doing salvos on him and ignoring his three adds, then kicked in a prayer of healing and AoE nuked the adds quickly, then continued to drop him. Good times.

In a moment of 'what now?' I strolled into the Military Ward and signed up for Warsong and Alterac Basin. To make a long story short, I did some instant kills and provided cheap kill points as soon as Captn was down. A valliant defender of the horde named 'Graagh' which reminds me of the warrior video Brutal Fury 2: Graagh is back specialized in dropping Captn whenever possible. This Graagh is a level 59 elemental Shaman, and looking at his armory profile I guess it is fair to say he is twinked out as well: Graagh's Armory profile. On the good side, I did get approx 30 kills. Hitting AB, I was totally lost, since my macros all require Captn as party leader to do the targetting and I did not end up being party leader in AB. The game was almost over anyway the horde having rushed and bottled up the Alliance at their entry point, so it was over quick enough. I would have to re-do the macro setup using /focus as target instead, but since I do not really want to PvP I wont bother.

Right, where to now? A look at my quest log showed me a number of quests in the Blackrock Depths. So I headed there, dropped Pyron, greeted Marshal Windsor and got the follow up quest and the fake quest chain end respectively at Morgan's Virgil. Then I went back, suicided my party, grabbed the Shadowforge Key quest in the tomb on the way down. After passing the Ring of Law, I moved through the domicile and past the vault and reclaimed Ironfoe. For completeness sake I also extinguished Incendius at the same time. On the way back I stopped at the vault, and used the ten or so keys I found. Funny enough the 'Heart of the Mountain' quest gem can be picked up if you look from a below the waist angle through the wall rather than through the door, so I grabbed that for my party. The dark keeper was hiding in the Grim Guzzler. Right. After getting my Shadowforge Keys I was slightly grumpled. A couple of blue drops, and all of them mail, great! I did get the Crumpled Note though, which continues the Onyxia chain. I found General Angerforge to be a bit brutal.

In those moments I really regret not being affliction based anymore. While it wastes mana on trash, I am certain that it is way superior damage output on bosses. I dont claim this as well researched and universal level truth, just my subjective impression.

Ah well. Time to hit Silithus. Tomorrow. Well after sleeping anyway.

Captn out.

Level 53 - Party in Hearthglen

In the last few days I have not been able to focus on this project as much. For that reason the progress is slower and my playing bouts are little slivers rather than evenings. The team is now halfway to level 54, done with the western plaguelands fields quest chain, a good way along the Darrowshire chain. Heroes and Villains of Darrowshire are sorted. The toughest bit was getting Davil's Libram in Hearthglen. While I had little problems killing any of the mobs so far, the high protector level 61 elite who patrols there is a bit scary, since I couldnt really scratch him with my spells due to his level. No, I did not try, I knew from other higher level mobs.

Just as I was approaching the house with the Libram, there was a request for a tank in guild chat for Arcatraz key fragment. I agreed to help, and since I was not sure if I would be able to nuke the elite pallies and priests in the house I summoned a guild-rogue over. As it turned out, it was unnecessary. It was two mobs at most. While waiting for the Libram to respawn for the other chars, I took this picture.

I did not do anything worthwhile with the team, but our key fragment run became clearing the whole of Arcatraz and was rather enjoyable. =]

Today I have completed the kill quests that start off the Fordring quest chain. Unfortunately the third quest needed to continue is again a collection quest, and for me 15 quest drops means 75 quest drops. /sigh I am at 20/75 now.

On a hunch I HS'ed to Gadget and flew to Silithus, but all quests were still grey to me. One or two more levels I recon. I set my Hearthstone to Cenarion Hold now and portalled back to Ironforge.

Captn out.

Level 52 - Intercept!

It is really nice to have the felguards intercept the target, which not only looks nice and increases damage by wasting less time on them running, but also stuns the target and decreases damage taken. I like it!

Tonight I finished the Warlock, Priest and Mage level 50 class quests in the Sunken Temple. I had done the legwork for them in Felwood and Azshara respectively on the weekend, but did not set foot into the Sunken Temple yet.

While I was blasting my way to the actual instance, a hunter pulled a lot of mobs which not only attacked me for no reason I can fathom, but also turned out to be a bit too numerous for me. They started running home with about 10% health left.

Inside the instance I ignored the lower part and went straight up the stairs to the level with the six trolls that keep the shield for the prophet up. Since these are mandatory for the prophet and also drop the quest items for the warlocks, that was quite logical. I found the groups in the concourse more of a challenge than the troll mini bosses. My handling of the groups improved and I had less re-summons or resses to do, but I wasnt quite happy with it.

Once the shield was down, I went back down to the entrance level and then up the stairs to the upper boss floor. This floor contains the lost prophet and his flock of followers, the Hakkar event, the dreaming dragon Eranikus and about zillion dragonkin packs. Funny enough the dragonkin packs ended up to be easier for me than the troll packs I fought before. My strategy was to sent in the felguards and two salvos of shadow bolts, fire bolt and smite to kill one dragonkin and then AoE nuke the rest. It worked beautifully.

The prophets deathwalkers were a bit of a hassle as usual, but nothing major. The prophet and his sidekick dropped before they could do any real damage. I was lucky in getting the priest pants from him.

Next up where four dragons. They went down without incident, completing the mage and priest quests. My best attempt on Eranikus had him on 3%. If you have fought him before you know he is not that easy. He may be only level 55 elite, but with acid breath that DoTs you, the ability to sleep targets and relatively strong melee he was too much for my group.

I will return to the sunken temple to do the Hakkar and Eranikus events another day, it was getting too late. I had played around on the Onyxia chain some more before heading to the temple and am at the BRD part of the chain now.

Also, in other news: Captn is now holy/discipline spec. Compared to the damage output of the rest of the team Captn's contribution was really low, approx 8% of the total damage dealt by the team. While misery and co might be reasons to keep shadow spec, I have not really used these effects since level 50, with nearly everything being down either before or with the second salvo of direct damage spells.

Another day will tell if it was a good idea! =]

Captn out.

Level 50 - Summon Felguard Army

The 41st talent point is mine! This marks a departure from the dot'n drain method of killing things. Don't get me wrong, it works not only beautifully, it also looks great. The downside is that it is rather mana intensive and a lot of mobs die before the full dot damage can be unleashed. The affliction 41 point talent is very nice, but more interesting for PvP as far as I can see. I certainly dont need more DoTs. So I went and put all points into Demonology instead. This allows me to summon felguards and enjoy boni to my spell damage, stamina and intelligence at the same time. I put points on Dlaire into improved health stones and improved imp buff, just in case.

I did not know what the result would be. It is amazing. A salvo of shadow bolts with Alaire's fire bolt, Captn's holy fire and the three felguards insta-gibs mobs one or two levels ahead of me and makes short work of mobs five levels ahead of me. After that the resists start in earnest and make it not advisable to get more trigger-happy.

In any case, a new milestone is reached, and its awesome.

Captn out.