Casual Huntering

Archive for the ‘Achievements’ Category

I have like 5 minutes to write something. I should have written this morning, but instead I spent the morning before work transcribing Leyenda (classical guitar piece) from sheet music to tablature.

So, as you may have already known, I have been very nervous about this week, Children’s Week, and the PvP achievement “The School of Hard Knocks” I’ve been doing more BGs lately to get myself prepared for it, and it paid off!!!!

Yesterday I finished up the achievement relatively quickly. It took 5 Eye of the Storms, 2 Warsang Gluches, 2 Alterac Valleys, and 1 Arathi Basin. It helped that I paid money to get a run boost enchant, and I already had a 10% bonus to my mount speed because I was playing as a beast master, and it also helps that I’ve had some dumb luck as of late (see previous post about the spirit beast).

So, now I get to learn how to PvP as a mage, and a DK.  I don’t know if that’s going to happen or not, we’ll see how it goes. I’ll give a report.

Anyway, I hungry, and that school lunch food is calling to me.

Yup, I’m on spring break, as a result I’m writing on my blog less. Does that make any sense at all? Ha! I think not. But it seems when we have more time free we get less done at least that’s been the case for me. Maybe its because there’s freakin’ snow on the ground right now, a good foot of it or so. What gives? Come on its suppose to be spring break, not winter break.

So, I spent a good chunk of yesterday running around looking for eggs as part of the Noblegarden holiday. I ran around Goldshire for a long time and wow its crowded there. I played in the morning before 8am and there quite a few people there. When I came back in the afternoon around 1:30pm, oh my gosh, it was wall to wall pink bunnies. And half of them were camping spots. I was sick of it, so I took myself to Dolanaar (for you hordies who don’t know where this place is, its the night elf beginning area). Much better, but the eggs are more widely spread out. Still that’s where I’ve left my character so I can hopefully finish the thing tomorrow. Its probably one of the easiest holiday meta achievements to get out there. But my goodness, hunting eggs can be a little much after a little while. When ever I do something for a long time that’s very repetitive I dream about right away when I go to bed. Without fail I started running around looking for eggs in my dreams. Priceless I know.

Oh, my brother-in-law finally got back to playing WoW again now that he’s finally done with all of his console games that he got from Santa for Christmas. He writes The Daily Warlock, which is kind of funny, because he hadn’t updated for 8 or 9 months during his WoW hiatus. Hopefully we’ll see a little more out of him in the future. My warlock is still just level 10, has a clerk/banker job, hanging out in Ironforge. And I don’t have any plans to change that anytime soon.

So, I’ve been focusing on leveling a druid and a priest. I’ve been playing which ever character has the most rest XP at the time. Lately the priest has been getting the attention because I pretty much had no rest XP on the druid. I’m leveling the priest partly just because I want a high level enchanter and a high level inscriptionist. It’s also nice to have another healer bouncing around. The druid is an herbalist and alchemist. I particularly want to level alchemy, but I also love being a cat, sneaking about. Way too much fun.

Anyway, I don’t know how much more writing I’ll do for spring break. Of course I’ll write today. I have nothing better to do with my morning, but I can’t guarantee you’ll get anything else the rest of the week. If they had a second maintenance time during the week I’d probably write more, but they don’t.

Another lack of Tuesday maintenance means a lack of blog posts here at casual huntering. I spent Tuesday morning trying to finish off the Lunar Festival on my Death knight. I had to pug every one of the northrend dungeons, but I finally got it done. I used random dungeon finder to jump into either the heroic or normal versions of the instances. I was either the top of the dps meters or on the extreme bottom (I only recently got good enough gear on my DK to be able to do heroics at all).

Well, all of my focus and energy has been on trying to get these holidays done. This morning I got on the computer and I didn’t know what the heck what to do. I spent like 30 minutes just trying to organize my bank alt’s bags and guild bank tabs. Wow its a mess! That’s what happens when you are trying to level jewelcrafting. I have jewelry all over the place. I have 4 tabs on my guild bank and they are all packed. I threw a few things on the AH, just to create more space. I’m such a pack rat.

Yeah, I then tried to work on leveling my druid, lost focus on that in like 5 minutes. I really need to get her to level 40 so I can get her epic mount. I was too impatient so I only did one quest and then jumped on my main character, my hunter.

So, I decided the SV spec on my hunter isn’t doing it for me. I am now experimenting with a MM build. I was suppose to try it out on ToC 10 last night, but our guild raid didn’t happen. So, this morning I did a couple of randoms. I’m really enjoying this spec more, but I’ve only done 2 dungeons so far, so the verdict is still out.

Other than that, I’m feeling a little blaa. Debating about going back to my altoholic mode that I was in before February. I’ve been neglecting all characters that aren’t on Deathwing (and several that are). Mostly only my DK and Hunter have gotten any attention from me. I’ve really enjoyed dungeons on my DK in Unholy spec so maybe I’ll play around with that. But the ever approaching gear respec makes me won’t to focus on alts instead. Oh, I probably should just pick something and stick with it.

Anyway, I’m trying to get this out quickly because I need to get back to work. So, I’m sorry about the typos that will inevitably show up somewhere.

Friday Fiction is back (yes I found my flash drive). And this is a good one too!

Before we get to that I gotta jabber about what I’m doing in game. My wife and I finally got our “Elder” title, took us long enough. We’d been having difficulties getting guildies together to run the 5 mans. It seems whenever we were able to get on they were raiding (we aren’t geared enough to be on the progressive raids at this point). I guess we could have puged it, but we really didn’t want to wait through the queues; it takes a while for us dpsers.

So, why we were waiting for our gear to get done with 25 man ICC we worked on leveling my wife’s death knight. She’s almost to level 64. We’d really like to catch her up to my brother and sister-in-law if we could help it (they’re both level 68 I believe).

Sadly, I still don’t have the “elder” title on my death knight. Our guildie tank specifically said that he didn’t want to swap people out. A little annoying if you ask me, but it took a lot bending arms backwards just to get that done. Us beggers should be choosy I guess. So, I get to pester guildies next week. They’ll find out just how annoying I can be (evil laugh).

I’ll be very happy to have this holiday done so I can get back to work. It’s so funny that I look forward to holidays to mix things up then look forward to finishing them so I can get back to the same old same old. I’ve been neglecting all of my many alts who are all sitting on full rest xp in random inns all over the place.

Anyway, its Friday, so lets get on with the Friday fiction.

Remember Prax’s dream about that strange girl? Well, read on, things start to get interesting (as usual, I only wrote Praxton’s part, Loreli wrote the mystery girl, and Moordeth wrote Voljub).

There was something going on in the Trade District. A crowd was forming and unfriendly shouts could be heard.

Prax heard all of this commotion. He followed the commotion, partly out of morbid curiosity.

There was a slight break in the crowd. Just enough for Prax to see through. Four city guards were escorting a hissing, spitting angry woman. She was fighting them, trying to break free. She was dressed in dark ritual robes and the crowd was shouting obscenities at her. One good look at her face revealed the girl from Prax’s dream.

Prax’s jaw dropped. He instantly recognized the woman that was flaying about at the arms of the Stormwind guard. He attempted to navigate through the crowd to get a closer look. He boots managed to find some loose cobblestone and he fell to the ground. Praxton managed to get himself up enough not to get stepped on with the growing crowd. He tried again to weave his way through to the front.

Praxton finally got to the front of the crowd to see the scene unfold.

The girl thrashed wildly, her sable locks whipping around her face. She managed to break the guards grip and whirled, hitting him with a blast of shadowy energy. Murmurs of Cult of the Damned made its way through the crowd. The captive turned to flee, but found herself blocked by a few of the braver souls in the on-looking crowd. The guards took hold of her again and someone managed a binding or silencing spell on her. They dragged her through the Trade District, obviously headed for the stockades.

Praxton was filled with strange emotions. He should have felt disgust for this woman, obviously a member of the cult of the damned. It had to be a coincidence that she had been in his dreams, but it looked just like her with his father’s eyes. Praxton followed the crowds, with growing interest and concern. He needed to help her somehow. “Pst, Voljub, what do you make of that?” Prax whispered.

Voljub spoke softly “Voljub has seen people of this kind before in Northrend with Master Volrac. Some of them are beaten prisoners and some beat the prisoners. Master Volrec wore clothes like this one often.”

Prax should have left this alone, but he kept following (forgetting why he was there to begin with). What did this woman do? The crowd dissipated as the guards got closer to the stockades, but a sizable group continued to follow out of curiosity. Prax whispered to Voljub, “I saw this woman last night…” He began to trail off, “..in my dream.”

Voljubs response was quiet and curious. “What happened in your dream master?”

They went around another corner, still trailing the guards, “Its, er, um, all kind of fuzzy.” Prax kept his eye on the girl. “There was this girl, she um, n- needed me. That’s all I can remember.”

The captive girl seemed to have sobered up slightly. She was now hissing threats at the guards, but she wasn’t fighting them.

Praxton wanted to try to get a little closer, they were going over a bridge now, a few bystanders still looked on towards the girl.

“This girl needs Master eh…mmm We follow her yes?”It was hard to stay balanced on his Masters shoulders with all the people bumping about.

Prax watched with the last bit of the crowd as they took the girl into the Stockades. Prax whispered, “I um don’t know what er to do?” Prax wasn’t thinking rationally. “Voljub, could you… um, maybe distract the guards?” He said, towards his shoulder. ‘What am I doing???’, the rational part of Prax head scream, but he pushed it aside. He couldn’t explain why he felt he had to help her, but the emotions were so strong; he continued to set aside rational thoughts.

Voljub whispered sinisterly “With pleasure my Master.” He leaped off of Praxton’s shoulders. Still invisible he hopped over to the Stockade. The guards were talking among each other. As one began to leave he saluted and said ‘For the Alliance’. Voljub spoke up mockingly with his raspy voice “For the Alliance”. Their heads began to turn in all directions. Voljub moved a closer. “For the Alliance, For the Alliance.”

“Who goes there? Show yourself!” barked a guard.

“TeeHeehee For the Alliance, For the Alliance” Voljub began running circles around a guard and slowly let himself become visible all the while chanting mockingly “For the Alliance.” When the guards noticed him he ran off down the street. Before he left the guards though he lit an Alliance flag up in flames. All three guards chased Voljub down the street as he continued to mock them. As he passed Praxton he smiled and did a little flip.

‘Now what?’ Praxton thought to himself. Then he saw that face again, that familiar face from his dreams. There were still a couple of guards; most of the onlookers were gone at this point. ‘It’s now or never’, he thought. Prax tried to act nonchalant, gave a poor attempt at whistling. He walked closer to the guards and the girl. He didn’t want to kill anybody, just get the girl away. He focused on the inner heat. Maybe he could just set the guards shoes on fire. His attempt at getting closer to the stockades did not go unnoticed by the guards whose attention were heightened.  Prax felt for the heat, he was the heat.

He heard the guard say, “Move along.” He could hardly notice, the heat was overcoming him. Prax tried to act like he was just walking by, he attempted to send the focused heat to the feet of the guard on the left of the girl. ‘Oh no’ Prax thought as he saw a stream of flames start to engulf the guard, the plate metal started to melt. Praxton was mortified; he didn’t yet have a good feel over the heat. He must have drawn too much.

The man started to scream in pain. The other guard let go of the girl and rushed towards Praxton while pulling out his sword. Prax just stood there in shock, “What have I done?” he whispered to himself.

Next Friday I’ll put up some more on this story. We’ll see what happens to Praxton and this mystery girl.

Well, I’m kind of getting burned out with the holidays. I’ve gotten the Love is in the Air on both Aoirselvar and my death knight, Elliahna. All I have left of the Lunar Festival on Aoirselvar are the Northrend Dungeon Elders. Elliahna still needs to get all of the Northrend elders in and out of dungeons and she still needs to kill Omen. Hopefully we’ll get done with this soon.

I’m sure most of you were able to get all of the requirements for these things done in like what, two days? Not me, my goodness it takes me a long time. An hour or two in the morning running from one elder to the next is enough to drive me CRAZY!! But that pretty purple shiny protodrake makes it all worth it, right? I especially want it on my death knight because of her +20% mount speed ability. I know I probably should have used that for something more useful, but come on, it’s dang useful to be faster than most people, especially when you are farming.

Well, besides the holidays, my wife and I have been trying to catch her death knight up with our little family team. She’s almost level 63, very close. (Oh, I’m still mad to this day. We created her WoW account just a month or two before the “Recruit a Friend” program came out. I would have really liked that mount too. Oh well, what can you do?) Anyway, our little 5 man family team is really starting to form up, slowly. We have a few problems, okay more than a few, but we’re coming along. Our problems mostly stem from noobishness. My brother is our healer, but he doesn’t yet know how to heal (he’ll be the first to admit that to you). I’m the tank, and I don’t really know how to tank (the only reason I can do decently at this point is because I’m like 12 levels above everybody else in the group, the only 80 at this point). Our dps is fine, my sister-in-law loves it on her warlock and my wife, I think, is starting to enjoy her death knight. Our friend Dave, the other hunter, he’s doing better, but he still has the tendency to send his pet out at random mobs, just not as often now.

I didn’t play with them last time because I was with the boys doing boy stuff (which doesn’t have the same meaning when you live in Utah and you’re lds). Yeah, our guys night out consisted of us playing board games. We spent most of the time playing Axis and Allies (a very awesome game if I might add). So, I missed our last family 5 man dungeon night. They enlisted my cousin to play as a tank. Even though he was about level 75, they wiped … a lot from what I heard. Between my cousin going gun ho with his fury warrior, Dave sending his pets at random mobs, and massive AoE healing spells done by my brother to fix their mess and pulling the aggro in the process, an inevitable wipe would occur. When I’m tanking my brother said he usually gets to be in Shadow spec most of the time, but at the time I had a blood spec and I did a lot of self healing.

Since then, I’ve thrown down 1,000 gold to get dual spec on my death knight. She is now a 2 handed frost tank and 2 handed unholy dps (with +20% mount speed which I probably didn’t need, but I wanted it). I wanted the tank spec to play with my family, but at this point I don’t want to tank in random pugs, hence the dps spec. I’ll admit, I’m not confident enough to do it in randoms.

Any who, this whole 5 man team has gotten my wife excited about playing again, not that she was ever not into playing, just not as much. We worked on leveling her death knight the other night, as I said above. She was worried that I was bored and I didn’t really want to do that. Not true. Maybe I didn’t get XP or gold or whatever, but I like the fact that she wants to play more and I enjoy helping her characters out. We alternate nights to decide what to do after our kids go to bed and she’s actually been picking WoW more often than she usually does. That will happen often when there are holidays going on, but she hasn’t been only wanting to do the holiday stuff. She’s starting to get on her alts that she really likes, such as her level 31 shaman.

Can I tell you how much fun it is to play with your spouse in this game? I’ll have to go into detail on that on another day, but let me tell you, it rocks. Anyway, looks like I had better get going to work soon. I’m so proud of myself, I haven’t written on this blog at work for a while (not including replies to comments). Well, see if I can keep it out of work more so I can be a good little employee.

Sorry about the random update post. I’ll try to keep posts like this to only once a week or less.

Okay, so I’ll be frankly honest with you all. If we don’t have Tuesday maintenance server down time, I don’t and won’t post as much for that week. I love writing on here, but I also love playing the game. I use that down time on Tuesday mornings to write a little something something about the game. Otherwise, I’m playing. I gives me something to do related to the game at least you know.

Man, there probably should be more down time (even though I would be very upset about it). I might get more accomplished with my life. dishes, feeding the dog (wait, I don’t have a dog), exercising (well, I do exercise, but it takes great motivation, that of which has been failing me lately), etc. I don’t know…

So, I went raiding on Tuesday with my guild thinking I would be the bomb with my hunter, much better geared than ever before. Or at least I thought I’d do better, but no. My dps was pathetic, maybe worse. I know part of the problem is (as mentioned before) my focus in the game. I’m not super focused on getting my dps up to uber levels with my hunter. My younger brother has been bugging me about it. He wants me to go sit in front of the target dummies and practice my shot rotation and such. I will eventually but I can’t get myself to do it, not when there is so much else to do!! Of course part of the problem was also the fact that I was super tired and I kept dozing off. Not very good for dps when you just sit there like a bump on a log.

Besides lack of sleep, the main thing that has gotten me bogged down lately are holiday achievements. I’ve decided, now that Eliahna (my DK) is level 80, I want to get her started on the road to a pretty 310% speed violet protodrake as well.  And… I still have holidays to do on my hunter. So, I have double duty when it comes to this. At least we are on really easy holidays even if they require a bit of work. I just need to drag my sorry butt to all the elders all over the greater Azeroth. No PvP achievements at all in these holidays so we’re doing good. I’m dreading the up and coming Children’s week holiday. I love the holiday, but I don’t know if I’ll be able to get all of those battleground achievements. I probably should start practicing now, on my hunter, my dk, and my wife’s mage.

So, I should be playing randoms to get frost emblems; instead, I’m running around trying to complete holiday achievements. Thus neither of my end level characters are improving their abilities.

Even if the holiday was over though, I’d probably just be running around on alts or something. I can’t stay focused very well. (Which is why I’m writing the post right now instead of working like I should. )

So, I want to dual spec my deathknight to be a frost dual wielding tank for 5 man instances with family and guildies, and a unholy dps for 5 man pugs and farming. I’ve been tanking all of these really difficult instances, like the underbog, and hellfire peninsula instances. Well, okay, maybe not quite so difficult, but its been fun to play with my brother and his wife, even if my character isn’t yet getting anything out of it.

I really want to also level my kitty druid. Right now she’s sitting at level 36, and she’s been ignored due to holiday stuffs and whatnot. But I really would like to get her to level 80 before the expansion comes out as well.

Rutabaga

Sorry, I’m jumping all over the place on this post today. Randomness at its best, I guess that’s how my brain works and when you get a quick post about what’s on my mind, that’s what you get. Sorry about that.

So, I’ve been ignoring my druid, and I really would like to get back to my other Deathknights (on Duratan US and Earthen Ring US). I’m still trying to work up their professions, which seems like its taking … forever! Especially when one of them have a crafting profession. I’m really guilty about putting those off forever, but not this time, we’re going to level them before we enter the outlands with these characters by golly.

Man, it seems like I had a lot of other things to say. Maybe I need to think on it for a moment.

I finally got working on the “Love is in the Air” holiday achievements on my Deathknight, (with my wife the mage to help me out, I wonder how I ever get along without her, the ports are so nice).

Oh my goodness, “Love is in the Air” this year is a breeze. I thought maybe the candies would be difficult because you have to still buy bags, which still has the random element, but I bought a bag, it gave me 10 charges with the heart candies then. I got half of the achievement in one bag. Well, the candies aren’t soulbound. So, you ought to put those duplicates on the Auction House, and then simply buy the ones you don’t have for like 50 silver each!!!!! Wow, could it not be any easier!

Oh and the achievement with the Romantic picnic Basket? You don’t even have to have one, just get someone else to sit down with you and eat your Buttermilk Delight (which by the way is the only expensive chocolate on the AH, it was going for about 40 gold). So, save your love tokens.

The achievement Fist full of love, the one where you through flower petals at people, now that can be a bit of a challenge. We hung out in Dallaran forever last night trying to finish up that, never could find a Troll Rogue. If I can’t find one, I’m just going to roll a troll on my wife’s account and go throw petals at him in the beginning area. A little bit of a pain in the butt, but still easy peazy.

The rest of them are easy as well. I pitied the fool achievement just makes you go all over the place to do that. Oh, and yes you do have to be 80 to get into Naxx to pity the fool there. And you need to turn your group into a raid group, easily done if you click on the raid tab of the social box. On the top it says “convert to raid”, you’ll need at least one other person with you or at least in your party to do this.

Oh and by the way, those bracelets that you make and take to the different leaders in the capital cities? Yeah, those aren’t soulbound either. I saw them on the AH for about 12 gold each. This is actually going to be an easy way to make extra money doing what you normally do and selling off the bracelets.

Makes me wonder if they made this holiday achievement too easy, almost flip flopped from last year. They’re giving us more time it seems like as well. So, take your time, enjoy and savor the holiday.

By the way, it’s Friday and that means Friday Fiction! Today I’m introducing Aoirselvar Silversmith. Yes, he’s my main character and I talk about him all the time, but not from a role play perspective. I decided to roll him a twitter RP account (http://www.twitter.com/AoirselvarRP). I’ve only written a small little bit for him so far. He is much different to write for than Praxton. He has a much more jovial personality, closer to mine but more daring than I am. He’s a little crazy and has symptoms of ADHD like I do, very tangential (prone to tangents). At this point he’s not interacting with any of the other RP characters so all of this is my own writing. (sorry about that).

Hope you enjoy.

It was foggy as Aoirselvar walked off the boat at the Menethil Harbor “Aye, it good to be home.” He said as he watched crews unload his bike. Aoir knew it would be quicker to probably take a gryphon, but he wanted a chance to take a ride, took him long enough to build, he wanted to take every advantage he could, besides, he wanted to take in the familiar sights, he had been in Northrend far too long.

Aoir’s mind drifted as he rode past gators and such, it seemed like a lifetime since he had been here in the Wetlands. He felt so nostalgic. It was chilly this time of year, even some of the swamps here were frozen over, it started to lightly snow, which made for a more exciting motorcycle ride. Aoir grinned in anticipation.

The lake in Loch Modan was usually frozen this time of year, ‘I wonder how much weight it can take. Wonder if I dare…’ Aoir thought. ‘Best not to think about it’, he thought as he took off towards the lake, revving his bike as he went. As he came to the edge of the lake, he hesitated for a second then gritted his teeth and accelerated. Amazingly enough the ice held, Aoirselvar yelled out in triumph, then cranked the handbars hard right and balanced the bike as it slid. He then brought it straight as he popped a wheelie and yelled! Then heard a hard cracking sound. He looked back and saw that maybe he over did it.

There was a splinted crack following him quickly where he had previously ridden. “Oh @#%”, Aoir exclaimed. He looked forward and again revved his bike turning for the shore. “#$@#$ @#$%”, he found himself in the middle of the lake, ice breaking quickly around him; there was a little island just up ahead. Aoir gunned it as he felt his back tire dropping down occasionally. Finally he felt firm ground below his bike. He gave an audible sigh.

“Should a thought that one through better.”, he said out loud as he scratched at his braided beard.

He looked about, thinking that an island wasn’t the best place to be with a motorbike. Just then he heard a snap, and growl. At least 13 starving gators started taking turns snapping at him. ‘It was turning out to be a fun day after all.’, Aoir thought to himself. He reached down, he’s gun was attached to the bike next to the collapsed sidecar. It had been awhile since he hunted gators. A few moments later, Aoir, surrounded by dead alligators, surmised his situation.

Still on the island with a motor bike.

However, maybe the southern side of the small isle would work. Without a moment of hesitation he kicked his bike in gear. Ice began to crack, but not quickly enough. Aoirselvar was able to glide nicely along without any further problems.

A little while late Aoir pulled up to his family’s ranch house in Dun Morogh just outside of Kharanos. Aoir had long since been on his own, but his sister who now ran the place still let him house his animals here. He made sure there was plenty of coin to go around to keep the animals housed. He had plenty from mercenary jobs he pulled in Northrend lately. He didn’t have as much time as he would have liked to stay around, he needed to get some supplies in Ironforge then head out to Stormwind to visit Kydra.

Aoir had left a couple of his pets in the stables at Dalaran, particularly his large snapping turtle and his wolf. He had a little whelping he liked to keep around with him, it was amusing at best during long gryphon flights.

He went to the cage where his ghost saber was quietly sleeping. “Misty, how’s it going?” The big cat rolled over slightly eying her master. Then she rolled back, closing her eyes.

“Oh, get off your butt ya’ silly cat. I got somethin’ for ya’” Misty’s head perked up.

The dwarf threw in a large piece of raw meat. That got the cat’s attention. She got up, excitedly, but then insisted on slowly meandering towards her mid-morning breakfast as if to say, ‘well, I guess if you insist.’ and then she devoured the meat.

“I’m looking for some company, and I er, missed ya, ya silly oof of a cat.” The cat looked away.

“Oh come one, don’t be jealous. I wanted ter give ya a rest fer a bit. Let’s get going.”

The cat finished the last of her food & looked up. A little while later, Aoirselvar found himself roaming the halls of Ironforge with Misty at his side, “Agh, it feels good ta be home.”

This interaction with Aoir and his pets is really fun to write. I loved giving his cat an attitude problem. If you’ve ever had a cat before then you completely understand. I’m really not sure what I’m going to be doing with Aoirselvar, but it should be a fun ride.

Well, I woke up thinking that I was going to start my Valentines holiday with my toons. It did start today after all. Last year I got everything done with exception to the things that require you to be level 80, at the time, I still wasn’t, very sad I know. So, it’ll be a cinch to get this year. I already got the really difficult random drops. But as I’m running over to the inn keeper to start the once-an-hour routine (to hope to get the random drops on my DK) I notice that the inn keeper doesn’t have any thing for me at all.

Confused (as I assume most people in my predicament are) I turned to do some research and most people had great guilds how to get through the “Love Is In the Air” world of warcraft holiday for 2009 and earlier, not helping me at the particular moment.

By the way, here are some links with in-depth detailed information being updated as we speak: The WoWhead guide (which has usually been my favorite), the WoW.com guild (they’re updating as we speak as well), the WoWwiki guide (which tends to get updated much slower than the other two)

It appears instead of getting on once an hour, you need to instead do dailies to get Love Tokens, which then you can use to buy all of those difficult random drops (not so random anymore). You can also get Love Tokens by trading them in for bracelets which you can get materials to make them by killing regular mobs that you would be able to get XP for or would have even if you’re at max level. So, basically any mob that isn’t gray to you.  The drop rate is suppose to be roughly about 38%.

Instead of hoping to have enough luck to get the perm-pet Peddlefeet (ugliest one in the game), or the picnic basket, or the lovely black dress, you just buy them with the Love Tokens. Oh, and now there is a Rocket mount drop from the holiday boss.

There are plenty of other stuff you get to do, but this post wasn’t suppose to be a definitive guide, there are plenty other people doing all the work for that. I suggest that you go to WoWhead, for their “Love is in the Air” guide. Their guild will give you every bit of information you could care to know about the event (and some you probably didn’t care about).

So, I guess this is Blizzard’s answer to all of the complaints they had last year when many people weren’t able to finish the meta-achievement just because they weren’t able to get some random drop. The holiday changes from the hourly drudge to something that might actually be fun.  I think most of us don’t like much trying to get “random drops” to finish the meta-achievement. Many of us are attempting to do all of this to finish the big old grand meta achievement “What a Long Strange Trip It’s Been” so that you can get that 310% speed Violet Proto Drake. I know there are many people out there that were very diligent and already got this last year, but there are always alts and many of us weren’t cool enough to get it done.

So, get at it make love happen in your small part of Azeroth.

It’s that fun time of year again, where you try to get to you computer hourly for the possibility of a treat or to be tricked again by that sinister innkeeper. It’s Hallow’s Eve!!! So, apparently my wife and I got most of the stuff done for this holiday meta achievement last year (by the way, here is the link to the WoWhead guide, but if you really don’t know where that is then I have some nice property to sell you as well).

So, last night we got most of the stuff done. We loaded our selves with Gnerd candy and went off to do some battlegroups. I had forgotten how much fun controlled PvP is. I have been gripping about PvP lately, but the stuff I don’t like is the rogue sneak up on you while you are trying to mine an ore and then steal the ore from you kind of PvP. Not too big on world PvP. But I think my wife had fun. This was the second time she had ever done a battle group. She likes to do AoE and kills lots and lots of hordies. So now all I have left is to get the stink bomb quests up in south shore and I’ll get my nifty title, and be one step closer to getting my violet proto drake. I’ve seen several people have them and I’m a little jealous, I must admit. I’ll have to be patient though. I didn’t get a whole lot done last year in regards to the holidays. So, far I’ve only completed Brewfest and Winter’s veil meta achievements.

Some quick tips for your Hallow’s End Holiday Season:

Keep trick or treating, you can get your squalshing pet and your pumpkin head this way (that’s how I got it). The other two ways are to kill the Headless Horseman and then roll on it (oh it seems that someone else always wins the roll) and then you can get it by dousing the fires in one of the small towns like Goldshire (I couldn’t do this because there aren’t enough crazy people like me playing at 6am). Course I would still try to kill the Headless Horseman every day if I were you for that chance of a mount, one of the coolest mounts in the game. The only flying horse, its soooo cool, I wants it sooo bad. By the way on your way to attempting to get the pet, pumpkin head, and mount, you’ll get so many of those stupid rings it’ll make you sick. It’s like brewfest all over again, but just replace trinkets for rings. Very annoying.

That’s actually the hardest achievement to complete for Hallow’s Eve. The PvP achievement is easy peasy, you have to do some quests and stuff, no big deal. You’ll have to go to practically every inn in Azeroth, but why complain; you’ll be making a lot of money in the process. The costume wand achievement can be a bit tricky, but if aren’t patient (like me) and just want to get it done quickly then just go start asking around, your guildies will likely have a few they can give you themselves. Then for that last one you can’t seem to get, go to the trade channel (yes, the vile trade channel) and just tell someone you’ll pay them if they’ll use a charge on you. The going rate for this on my server is 10g per charge. And if you have extra charges you might as well make some money while you are at it. I personally think there’s easier and more fun ways to make money that spamming the trade channel, saying you’ll turn someone into a pirate for 10 gold, but to each his own.

Oh and don’t worry about the mask thing. Yes, its near impossible, and that’s why Blizzard took that off of the meta achievement. Over the years you might get it, if you are lucky. Actually, the masks drop from trick or treating a lot more frequently this year, have you noticed?

So, I have an advantage over some of you for holidays like this. My wife doesn’t have a paying job (our kids don’t pay very well you see) so she’s home during the day and she will get on and trick or treat for us hourly. In exchange during these holidays I’ll work on some of the achievements she’d rather not do (like children’s week PvP achievements). We both really enjoying do the holiday achievements. It’s a blast and it breaks up the monotony.

So, have fun, be safe trick or treating. Remember to only go to houses of people you know, beware of traffic (mechano hogs), check your treats before you eat them, and go with an adult. Have a happy Hallow’s Eve!!

I forgot to post this when I got it.

I have finally finished making my Mekgineer’s Chopper and I love it. I realized that I had the last of the mats for it right before I went on a raid with my guild in Ulduar. It was nice to be in a raid where I can break out my bike for part of it. Of course it was the only mount I rode while I was there. I was surprised how many people like to jump in for a ride. I felt like whenever someone jumped in my side-car that I had to give them their moneys worth and drive around doing 180 degree jumps and what not. Of course I guess they got their moneys worth because it was free after all. It was fun nonetheless. By the way, anybody in Deathwing US server, if you get me the mats I’ll make it for you.

Here are some family photos with my bike. My brother and myself in the hog. Kind of weird to have your brother be a night elf, I know, but he’s really my bro (Kygongyn), promise.

And the picture with me and Delu, well that’s a cousin picture. I have a few cousins that are in our guild.