Casual Huntering

Posts Tagged ‘love-is-in-the-air’

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.

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.