Honeymoon? Oy, shouldn't I at least get some time to think?!

I was browsing through the blogs that I follow, and Larissa wrote a post about how she felt that the blogging community is experiencing a wave of people burning down the Cataclysm expansion. I read the entire article, and I think I caught it right after posting since there were no comments yet.

I did start writing a comment and then realized it had become so long that it would fit better in a post of my own. So here goes.

My thoughts on Cata so far.

I have levelled a nightelf mage to 62. So yes, I have gone through the new levelling process, of course not entirely since there are several zones that I didn't do, but I think it gave a good idea about the current style.

I thought it was a lot of fun, the flow felt nice, but it was definitely a solo experience. No groups needed, no dungeons needed. And even if you do dungeons...well who needs a tank. Or a healer for that matter, just blast your way through them, or at least most of them.

I have levelled two characters to 85, and am working on my hunter who has just dinged 83. On my main, priest, I did all the 80-85 quests that I could find even.

Again, a lot of fun, great story lines, but very much a solo experience. Some quests do eventually lead to dungeons, but there is no absolute need to do them and you can level easily without them. I did not at all get the boardwalk feeling as much as some have described, I mainly enjoyed how I was actually fully pulled into the story for a change.

My negative is that I would indeed like to see some group quests, and would actually love the difficulty tuned up a tiny bit for some special quests. Mind you, in general I thought it felt well tuned.

On my main I have run every Cata dungeon on heroic mode, and have probably run all of them at least five times. I like them. I keep wishing for scaling difficulty, because my gear is already making them much easier. B

My negative here is that I absolutely hated having to spend 2-3 hours in a dungeon. No, I don't spend that time there anymore now, but it's quite taxing to do so, and I did not experience that as a lot of fun especially.

And oh...I am still affraid of pugs, but if you go in a guild group things are a lot of fun.

We have also started raiding again. We have killed 4 bosses and I am LOVING it! I do find the healing quite frustrating at times, but once I got my head around the whole thing of the healer not being the saviour anymore, but just doing their job, it did get better.

The one thing I feel I cannot really comment on is PVP. I tried a BG once to see if I could learn more about healing, and discovered that it simply sucks as a healer since you get chopped down faster than you can get a heal off almost >_<

The changes to my class? I still hate mana management. I wish they would come up with a way to make healing more challenging without mana management. I just really don't like that I either have to chose not to heal, or well...I cannot heal at all. Which is still what I think that mana management basically comes down to.

I am very much looking forward to trying out Disc once the next patch goes live, and seeing if my favourite spec is a valid raiding spec again, since currently holy just crushes disc in raids. And while I have come to like my circle of shiny healing numbers, I still muscle memory towards my penance button.

Overall? I think that the raiding is brilliant, but solo content is lacking sorely at 85. My priest has nothing left to do but dailies (I hate dailies) and the daily obligatory random heroic for valor points. Sure, I can go fishing for guild achievement or farming herbs for raid flasks. Not really too exciting.

So...I level alts. I do hope that more will come soon though, since I am on my third alt and lets face it...80 to 85 just doesn't take that long!

Must frustrating thing in the game at the moment: Archaeology having upgrades pre-raid. Should never have been put in like this, I see various guildies digging themselves to boredom and annoyance for hours on end because there are no other ways to get upgrades for them except for raiding.

Most amusing thing in the game right now: The economy. I have been seeing glyphs go from 100G one day to 10S the next. Tradeskill gear goes for gigantic amounts, and I am just in awe how much gold there is amongst players. What does worry me a little is that gold sellers have become increasingly active since stuff is hard to get, so they probably get more business again. (more gold sellers = more hackers = more disappointed people)

End verdict? So far I still like Wrath better than I do Cata, but my 10man did really, really well in that expansion..so maybe I'm a bit biased ;)

Quick Guide to Halfus Wyrmbreaker

We've been raiding a few weeks again already, and I have to say. It's not going too bad! My 10man has so far killed Halfus, Valiona and Theralion, Magmaw, and Omnotron....and we have made a couple of decent attempts at Ascendant Council; which I am confident we will kill upcoming weekend.

So I figured that I would share some tactics.

However, since there is quite some guides out there already I figured I would take a different approach. This will be more of a reminder guide, and a quick overview. Not so much a full-blown step by step fight guide.

Halfus Wyrmbreaker 10man

Composition: 2 tanks, 3 healers, 5 dps (yes, I know some say it can be done with 2 healers, but you shouldn't need 6 dps so why risk it?)

Halfus has 5 dragon type pets, and the proto behemoth. He will chose 3 each week to assist him, and the behemoth is always active.

Drakes in order of importance to free and kill:

Storm Rider – Shadownova on Halfus. Releasing the Storm Rider reduces the cast time of Shadow Nova and makes it possible to interrupt it.

Whelps – Killing the whelps significantly reduces Halfus’ damage and increases his damage taken.

Nether Scion – Halfus gains 100% attack speed when this drake is active. Releasing the Nether Scion will reduce Halfus’ attack speed, hit chance, and damage by 25%.

Time Warden – When released it roots player periodically, including the fireballs from Halfus’ protodrake. Causes fireballs to move much more slowly.

Slate Dragon – When Slate is active Halfus will put a mortal strike debuff on your tank reducing healing taken by 5% each time he hits a target. This ability stacks. When Slate is released it stuns Halfus periodically for 12 seconds.

Unless you have the top 3 to deal with you can free the most important two from this list and then ignore the third while you kill Halfus. If you do have Storm Rider, Whelps and Nether you will have to free all three.

At 30% he will start doing a pulse that will stun the entire raid. Each pullse will come ticks of 3. Make sure to interrupt shadownova still if Storm Rider was one of your dragons.

Happy Year Exchange!

I hope everybody will enter 2011 in the best possibe way, and may the new year be good to you all!

Also, if you do intend to set off some fireworks....

"If it goes wrong, you can always try with your other hand next year!"

Please be careful with yourself and those around you (and send a thought to all those poor pets)!

Wowzers - statcounter through the roof!

With the post about where you can find the dungeon locations in Cataclysm my blog took a quantum leap in number of readers. In just a few days I had 180.000 people come to my blog to check out where the dungeon entrances were, and currently my little blog has had a total of 307.770 views (yes I am looking at the stats page now, so much fun those things).

With another post about the faction vendors in Cata I managed to keep some people interested and even got a link mention at WoWinsider in the priest column (thanks Dawn!). So instead of having about 300 visitors per day I now seem to have about 4000 visitors per day.

I feel like I have to adjust my writing to this somehow and have to perform to a higher standard. Then again this should still be my little corner and I should just write what I feel like writing since that's the stuff that will probably come out best. Over time I have gone from trying to post on a schedule, to posting when I actually feel like I have something to say. For me this works, so I think I'll just keep that going.

I would like to thank all the people who visited my little corner in the blogosphere and a special thanks to those who left comments. It is great to see the numbers, it is even greater to read the appreciation that people have for what I've been doing.

Tthe information is out there, somewhere

I am currently working on a guide to the Volcanic Stone Drake (the one you get for all the heroic achievements), and I hope to be able to post something about that soon.

So while I got no mentions on some of the high end blogs like A High Latency Life did (grats River!), I do seem to have taken a little leap into acknowledgement and boy does it feel good.

And oh...to the commenter who asked whether I was male or female...wouldn't it just be fun if I let you all guess for a little bit longer?

Mounts in Cataclysm

If you're a mount collector like I am, you'll be all excited about the new mounts that can be gotten in Cata. I've been researching on how to get all these mounts and I figured I would put it all neatly together so that whoever's looking won't have to do the research again.

Abyssal Seahorse
The easiest to get new mount. This mount is given to you fairly at the start of the Vashj'ir quests to move around easier through the sea. I think it's actually quite a pretty mount, though the movement (it moves its bum from left to right) is a bit odd.

This mount is given to you as a reward for the quest The Abyssal Ride.

Camels

The Tan and Brown camels are purchasable once you reach exalted Ramkahen faction.

The grey camel is different.

From the comments on wowhead:

Scattered around Uldum are small click-able camel statues called "Mysterious Camel Figurine". If you click on one you will get teleported to the Steam Pools, which, if you havent gone exploring yet, are located on a plateau in the south eastern part of Feralas. Once you swim out of the water you will see lots of docile, but kill-able (wont fight back) camels that don't drop anything. You will also see Dormus.

You will get a debuff that is called "Dormus rage" which says bad things will happen in 20 mins if you don't kill Dormus.

Hes got about 250khp and was super super easy to kill as a heroic geared 85 MM hunter. I kept heals rolling on my pet but i never saw my pets hp move. Just move out of the things he spits at you.

Dormus has a chance to drop the Reins of the Grey Riding Camel, but as of this post the drop rate is unclear.

As soon as I find one of these Mysterious Camel Figurines I will try to make a screenshot and update this post with it.

Dark Phoenix

This mount is rewarded to the guild for Guild Glory of the Cataclysm Raider. which requires that your guild kills all the raid bosses currently in the game. It will be a while before we see any of these mounts around, unless you're on the same server as guilds like Paragon of course.

To get guild credits for a raid or dungeon at least 80% of your group/raid has to be from the same guild. So 4/5 - 8/10 - 20/25.


Drake of the South Wind

This mount is an extremely rare drop from Al'Akir. Raid boss in Throne of the Tides raid.

Drake of the North Wind

This drops from Altarius, Dragonkin boss in Vortex Pinnacle. The droprate is comparable to the other rare mounts, like rivendare's charger.

Drake of the East Wind

This drake is a reward for Glory of the Cataclysm Raider. Unlike for the Dark Phoenix, these achievements do not have to be completed while in a guild group.


Drake of the West Wind

This drake can be gotten from the Tol Barad dailies, for 150 Commendations. Tol Barad is like a mix between Wintergrasp and the Argent Tournament.

Fossilized Raptor

This mount can be found with Archaeology. An extremely rare find, but rather funky to look at. 

Goblin Trike & Goblin Turbo-Trike

Gobline mounts and unfortunately only available to horde, but I guess they would give an arm and a leg to have a class with Running Wild.

Available in a slow and a superspeed version like all factions mounts, and in a variety of colours.


Golden King & Kor'Kron Annihilator

These are the mounts that are rewarded to your guild as a reward to reaching guild level 25. Your guild gains levels through questing, dungeons, raiding, pvp....basically through playing the game.

Upon reaching level 25 these mounts will become available at the guild reward vendor (or through the guild page). The mount costs 1500 gold.

When riding these mounts the banner will show your guild tabard design.

Mottled Drake

This drake can be gotten through a loot card. Can also be traded in game, aaaand I will likely never see it.

It is however tradeable in game so you might be able to find it for auction if, like me, you don't do trading cards.

If you do, good luck and I hope you find it!



Phosphorescent Stone Drake

I've seen this one fly around in Stormwind already and it's a fairly pretty drake.

This drake is a drop of the rare spawn Aeonaxx in Deepholm. Not as ridiculously rare as the Timelost, but this will probably be fairly heavily farmed.

It is adviced to bring at least a good 5man group to bring down this boss.



Sandstone Drake

The one I am currently working on. This is not just a mount, this will transform your character into the mount, and someone else can mount you. It can be gotten through alchemy but it requires quite a bit of effort.

- 11K worth of vendor items which can only be gotten if you have exalted Ramkahen
- A total of 24 flasks of 3 different types
- 12 truegold bars

And then of course you need 525 alchemy and archaeology above 450, since the recipe itself can only be found in Canopic Jar's which are with Tol'Vir artefacts. Unfortunately the Jars can also contain mummified brains (my first one did) so when you do finally manage to get this drake made you may congratulate yourself on the hard work done.

Afterwards the vial of the sands is sellable on the AH, so if you're not an alchemist you can still get this mount. Expect to pay quite a lot though, on my server they currently go for 80K.

Spectral Steed & Spectral Wolf

These mounts can be gotten through the Tol Barad dailies. The Alliance gets to ride the horse, and the horde the wolf.

The mounts cost 165 Tol Barad Commendations and require exalted reputation with Baradin Wardens or Hellscream's Reach.

Ultramarine Qiraji Battle Tank

I think this is the best looking bug mount so far, but you do have to work hard for it....or be incredibly lucky.

This mount can be gotten through archaeology from Tol'Vir artefacts. Tol'Vir artefacts come in one clump with Kalimdor digsites and I've read reports about having dug up 300 or more common artefacts before they got this one.

Once you do have this mount it is definitely worth showing off though!


Vitreous Stone Drake

One of the prettier stone drakes I think. It's a rare drop of Slabhide in Stonecore dungeon.

Volcanic Stone Drake

This mount is rewarded when you complete the Glory of the Cataclysm Hero achievement.

I have plans to do a full guide to get this drake, like I did for the red proto drake in Wrath. But it's a long achievement and the list is quite a bit longer than it was in Wrath. I've seen them around already, and I can say they look gorgeous. Keep an eye out for the full guide, hopefully coming soon.

Paladin Mounts

Lastly I wanted to point out that the Dranei and the Tauren have gotten their own pally mounts now. The Dranei get a golden elekk and the tauren a golden kodo...I do wonder when the golden rams for dwarves will come though.