Quest Chains

There had been a confusing moment earlier during another chain. All of a sudden this squire started calling me master and had no use anymore for his pet reptile. He was a bit too quirky for my liking though and I declined his offer.

Rise Obsidion! Not that much. Down boy! Down! DOWN! /splat. Uhm, ok. I spot some opportunities for improvement there. After Obsidion did a bit of bashing on the day before, I cheekily asked a guildmate to sabotage his next go at smashing my party. Thereby the last chain in Searing Gorge was sorted. Having done all chains, including the dreaded Maltorius without help I did not feel too bad about not going for too many tries on Obisidon by myself.

After delivering that chain in Ironforge, I headed out to Zul'Farrak again. Time to succeed in the stair fight and get Nekrum's Medallion. Without that the Sharpbeak chain in the Hinterlands does not continue, and that would ruin my efficiency when going for the Ancient Egg. Previously, I had made two attempts on this fight. Both times I had run out of mana.

This time however, I managed. Barely, and using not only the Symbol of Hope, but also mana potions and Void Walkers, but manage I did. When Nekrum Gutchewer was down, I was totally out of mana and there was a dozen trolls running about. I looted the Medallion before dealing with them, hedging my efforts. Then I wanded the rest down. Sergant Bly was not really an obstacle. The chief of the troll clan and his sidekick were not a problem either.

Captn out.

Level 48 - Prayer of Fortitude

The first step away from the more elaborate individual buff session. Now, seeing as I already had a 60 mage you will probably find this as funny as I do. I learned Evocation from the trainer, but never actually used it until today. I kinda wondered...wait a minute, I should have that, shouldnt I? Well, I did. So while I know now that I wasted some time drinking, I am no longer going to continue this. Prayer of Fortitude and Evocation seriously reduce my buffing time.

Level 47 -The Thorium Brotherhood

HA! Now that I am closing in on the range where I do not really need it anymore, I got the [Robe of the Lich] from the Coldbringer in the Razorfen Downs. I visited him after seeing Tabetha in her swamp domicile to hand in the Tiara of the Deep quest. Oh yeah, I went to Zul'Farrak again and all quests except Nekrum's Medallion and the Divino-Matic Rod are done now. I would have these two sorted as well, if only I had not croaked on the stair fight again, this time a lot further into it, but still. I equipped the [Carrot on a Stick] for Alaire, Dlaire, Elaire and Blaire, but not for Captn, since I occasionally have issues with slight lag breaking /follow for longer distances. With the following characters being slightly faster, this should no longer happen. I hope so anyway.

In my quest to help Dlaire catch up on XP with the other characters, I went and dropped Mog'rash the giant at Janeiro's Point and did the follow up quest. Naturally, I did not keep any Buzzard Wings. I say naturally because the follow up quest requires them as ingredients to cook the bait for the next giant. Wondering where I could find Buzzard Wings I remembered the flock in the western Badlands around a dinosaur skeleton. A quick portal Ironforge and short gryphon ride to Searing Gorge later I stood in front of them. Now, some of you will know what happened next. Prize question. You kill 10 buzzards, with a total of 20 wings between them. How many wings to you have? Three. Thats right. Three. AARGH! So I merrily dilly-danced through the badlands being happy at the 45xp per kill and collected my ingredients.

On the plus side, I noticed at Thorium Point that the Thorium Brotherhood quest givers were ready to do business with me. Right after finishing Captain Smott's chain I headed back to Thorium Point and loaded up on quests. Then I did them all in one go. This finally brought Dlaire up to 47 with the rest, while Captn and Alaire are already halfway to 48. One interesting bit is that Overseer Maltorius got his due without calling in the cavallry as many people who play solo do. If you have quested there, you may remember this level 50 elite and his two elite guards giving you a headache. It was not really a pretty affair, but I had the last laugh and did it in the first go.

I have no real clue how I managed to neglect Dlaire that much, but I guess I will have to play her solo a bit to let her catch up and avoid multiple training stops. There are only two things left in Searing Gorge right now, the chain from the Blackrock Legion Ambassador and his sidekick and the Outhouse quest chain, for which the quest starter is not a multidrop by the way. I did get seven drops of the quest starting item, so that is no issue.

One thing that is a slight nuisance is that the Armory page has not been updated for any of my chars for a couple of days now, showing me still as level 42.

Captn out.

Level 46 - Misery!

Well, the debuff anyway. I should have put a talent point in Misery alsready at level 45, but I clicked Darkness before realizing that I could have taken Misery. Darkness gives Captn 2% more shadow damage for each point spent, max 5. Misery gives the target of Captn's shadow spells a debuff that makes it take 1% more spell damage from all sources, up to 5% with five points in it. Now, since I am using a party of five casters the later option obviously chucks out more damage. Anyway, misery is in the debuff list now. Since it did not grow for a while, this is quite nice.

I hit Zul'Farrak today. Dropping the troll packs was not as easy as taking out the trash mob packs in other instances, but doable. I worked my way to the fountain where the entrance road meets the dungeons circular main concourse and cleared that. Then I went to the right. I had to martyr the Martyr since he did not want to hand over the [First Mosh'Aru Tablet]. Then I proceeded to nuke the scarabs to fill the quota of uncracked scarab shells to 25/25.

A disappointment was that the witch doctor did not hand out the Vexing Crane staff, but rather dropped some green leather rubbish. Not a good omen that!

I cleared the area around the stairs and the executioneer. The stair fight went fairly well. Until it became obvious that I should have given all chars bread and water, instead of just water. Another try will be needed for that battle.

Captn out.

Level 44 - Curse of Shadow

Can I just say I love it? The awesomeness is simply amazing. Ok, Elaire's contribution in damage is further nerfed now. Not only does she use Curse of Shadows instead of Curse of Agony, but also continues to use the imp instead of a succubus. But hey, Dlaire, Blaire and Captn's damage and Captn's Vampiric Embrace healing has improved noticeably.

I have not played that much in the last few days, mostly because I was occupied with other stuff. Yes, stuff outside of World of Warcraft. Now however, I got a long weekend to nuke some stuff. I already used up the precious few rested XP that I had accumulated and am now closing in on level 45.

Proudly, I can hold the Mallet of Zul'Farrak high. Four of them in fact. Elaire was a bit too dead when it mattered, besides one of them does the trick already. Speaking of that, I am just en route to the racetrack in the Shimmering Flats to pick up the Carrot-onna-stick quest, which completes my ZF quest collection.

Surgeon General's Warning: Elekk riding causes hip damage!

Seriously. I was not happy with Alaire crowding the team's warlocks with her Elekk. Plus, the felsteed's fiery hooves made it look like the poor beast was being BBQ'ed at the same time. I had to do something.

Cosidering my options, I set my sights on a Black Stallion from the horse breeder of Menethil. Much to my disappointment the horse breeder was disinclined to do business with Alaire, since she is Draenei.

Alaire had already reached a surprising amount of reputation with the human capital Stormwind, roughly 16/21k on the last step, so only 5k of the 42k reputation total was missing. This is due to quest reputation rewards no longer being scaled by level, which results in more reputation points being awarded across the board. It also meant that I could do the quests in Elwyn forest that I had skipped to get the missing reputation. Besides being done rather quick, the usual path of going for the repeatable runecloth hand-in reputation quest is only available from level 50 onwards.

Happy to have reached the required exalted reputation with Stormwind, I got Alaire the Black Stallion. Only to find out what the wide back of the Elekk had concealed and done. I always thought Alaire was walking funny, but now it is certain. Alaire's hip has been permanently damaged by riding the Elekk, she is unable to bring her knees to the flanks of the stallion. As soon as she stops crying I will post a picture.

Captn out.

Captn - The Movie

The little incident with the Scarlet Monastry Cathedral encounter was sufficiently hilarious to make me look at the video captures that I made when playing. It is a pretty good example of what sucking the life out of mobs with this team is like.

This is my first ever web movie, so I hope it is not too horrible. Enjoy!



The addon that lets me see all the casts nicely on the party bars on the main screen and much more is X-Perl Unit Frames.