80

After enjoying flying around in Northrend I set to the Sons of Hodir quest chain in Storm Peaks. After also doing the Frosthold and Earthen quests in western Storm Peaks, I started my work for the Argent Dawn. Then the Shadow Vault, the Fleshworks and the Death's Rise quests and....DING!

A bit of shoring up materials and then my first level 80 shaman weapons were sorted: [Titansteel Guardian]. Time for bed! =]

Finally!

After some questing in Sholazar and Zul'Drak my shaman group hit level 77. The first thing I did was jump back to Dalaran, and test /follow with epic flight speec in Northrend with one character. I was a bit worried that it might break and make epic flight for the group near-useless. It worked out fine! Yay! YEEEEHAAA!

So I dug into the purses of my various characters to shore up the next money for the other three shaman's flying pleasure. Fortunately enough, I am a compulsive miner and had been a busy bee. Yet, I still could only buy the epic flying skill and cold-weather flying for three of the four shaman. So I took all my fungible assets and chucked them at the auction house. At the end of the day I had enough liquidity to sort out the last shaman.

I spent 24800g on this yesterday, but flying around fast in Northrend with five characters at once is well worth it. Time to take the four shaman to Storm Peaks and do the Sons of Hodir quest chain! =]

Back to boxing!

Being basically done with everything not on a weekly lockout that I could possibly do on my tankadin, prot warrior and unholy tank death knight, it's time again to look at my boxing!

This weekend, I did the Violet Hold on normal three times and Drak-Theron Keep once. My level 75 shaman did have quests for both places. While the yield of quest xp for Drak-Theron is much higher, Violet Hold is much quicker.

I wasn't very lucky on my first go at Violet Hold. My first random boss was the water elemental, called 'water boy' through clenched teeth. Fighting him at the door, I got through it. Then, the next one my personal least favorite random boss - the ethereal who summons his AoEing orbs. I got through both of those without any deaths. Then I fumbled on the final boss moving my shamans in the wrong direction after the threat-wipe and teleport - straight into the breath! =]

The second and third go saw me mowing down the voidwalker, beholder, doggie and the ethereal again - plus drop the dragon both times. That brought me up from 75.5 to 76! I took the shamans to the basin for some relaxed questing to 77 now.

How the desktop changes!

Looking over some old stuff, I noticed how much my setup has changed since I started boxing two years ago. Originally, I used three additional Sony VAIO notebooks that I borrowed from work to to bring up the number of computers to five. Not knowing where to put them, I originally just put them left and right, which was very simple, but not ergonomic at all.

Being fed up with this, I build a shelf above my computer desk to hold the additional notebooks, which looked much more tidy and formed a rough three by two matrix. This was much much better and was my setup for the remainder of the time that I used one computer per WoW session.

Finally then, last summer, I made the step to one computer running all five sessions and using KeyClone to broadcast my keyboard input. I had added one 22" screen between the two 19" displays I already had. I continue to use Multiplicity by Stardock to control both desktops that I use with the master keyboard and mouse. The additional notebooks went back to the sample stock at work and their space is now occupied with all the stuff that usually accumulates around computers.

Four Flavours of Tanking

The Wrath of the Lich King has thrown a big spanner into the works of my multiboxing! Now, after the expansion has been out for two months, the highest level of boxing I have done in Wrath is the Ring of Blood 2.0 in Zul'Drak with me using my Shamans to nuke and heal while I tank. On the other hand I have three level 80 chars that I played in normal single-char play. So what's up?

Firstly, Wrath is so much more fun and there are so many more things to do that for me there is subjectively much less need for boxing to entertain myself.
Secondly, Wrath introduces two features that are not a multiboxer's friend: phasing and vehicles. Some zones have your chars act along and do not phase the group into the same instance. While in a vehicle, /follow is not effective and while for some quests one can work around that and accomplish the objectives with one char and have the others positioned to get the credit, for others this is impossible. Both features are great in my opinion and enhance gameplay for non-boxers, but they are a pain for a boxer.
Thirdly, I have a different sort of pet project going!

My heart in WoW has been in tanking since just after starting to raid back in Molten Core. From then to T5 content I played my warrior tank as my main. For T6 and the Mount Hyjal waves I changed my main raid char to my paladin tank. Now, with wrath introducing Death Knights as fourth tanking class, I got it into my head to sample them all!

First, I pushed my paladin Stephanius to 80 and through heroics and raids. The paladin was and is my main for guild raids. Yet, I then pushed my death knight Tacitus to 80 and got him kitted out in heroics as tank. This week Monday I hit 80 on my warrior tank Ivl and did a bunch of heroics since then. My druid Ægis is still level 70 and I am working his herbalism up. As soon as that is on the level, I will push him through Northrend. This will then give me first hand experience in all tanking flavors!

I expect to take up boxing again once things in Wrath have settled down a bit, but at the moment I am too busy having single player fun! =]

Cheers, Steph.

The Headless Horseman

Die he shall! Again! And again! And some more! Why does the bastard not cough up his mount for me already! Every day I go and visit the Scarlet Monastery graveyard for another chance to try my luck. So far, my luck has been rotten. I got loads of Squashlings, cloth helms and a bunch of swords, but did not get to see a single mount. I understand it is the lowest dropchance item of the lot, but I really want it! For this week, I have been doing 13 attempts by myself per day, using the tankadin and three sets of four chars to summon and dps. I also did another 3-6 attempts per day with the kind help of guild mates.

A guild mate of mine and and the half dozen other people on my server that I saw on the mount clearly show that it does drop - just not for me! Ah well. Tomorrow will be the last chance to get one, Hallows End is over at 4:00am on Sunday.

Besides my obsession with the Horseman's mount and keeping up my tries in ZG, I have been rather busy raiding with my guild in Black Temple and doing all the ZA's that the dungeon lockout timers allow for a chance of getting rid of my engineering tank headpiece. I do have engineering on my warrior tank Ivl as well, but I want to drop it on my tankadin.

The Hunter and Druid team is now on the edge of level 65/66 since the last weekend. That is just enough to give me four additional summons of the Horseman per day. My last real leveling action on them has been to complete the Hemet Nersingway chain in Nagrand and upgrade the Hunter's weapons with the quest reward.

My first exotic pet was the white core hound from Azuremyst Isle, but the constant screen bouncing was just too annoying, so I set out to tame Silithids in Silithus instead. I am really enjoying the Silithids as pets. I like their animations and looks. Silithids are cunning pets, making them all-round pets with a couple of abilities that are neat in PvP. Such as netting enemies - something the spider family non-exotic pets can do as well, and increasing their damage output if they or their target is low on health. I look forward to pushing the hunters some more on the weekend.

DingDingDing - You have reached level 60!

As promised by Blizzard, the granting of levels earned within the RAF scheme is now working again. My druid Ægis and my fifth shaman Æteam are now 15% away from level 61! Yay!

To complete my personal RAF project, I now need to transfer these two chars to my main account, and two druids from the RAF accounts to two of my secondary accounts. Unfortunately, the paid character transfer is down for maintainance at the moment. According to an announcement on the 'Website and Forum' section of Blizzard's EU forums normal service is expected to resume tomorrow. Yay again!

For leveling, I will group the Shaman with the Moonkin Druids and the Druid with the Beastmaster Hunters. The Shaman is going to be elemental to help with the lovely caster totems, while the Druid is going to be Resto instead of the target purpose feral tanking, to supply the hunter group with heals and resses. There is a handy tool to consider group and raid buffs supplied by different classes and specs provided by MMO-Champion.

Funny side-note. After having an instant level 60, it cost me 925g to buy 75 and 150 riding skill, a fast mount and all spells at the trainer. The Trainer alone took 225g.