Friday, December 31, 2010

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)!

Thursday, December 30, 2010

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?

Tuesday, December 28, 2010

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.


Saturday, December 25, 2010

Holy Word Macro into Clique

I've been having the hardest time evah to get the holy words to work properly with clique. Either it tells me that the spell is not learned, or it will only heal my actualy target, and not on mouseover.

I googled and found a blog I had never been to before.

Murloc Parliament. 

This post made my day, finally I can actually use clique properly with this spell.

So first off a big THANK YOU to Zelmaru of Murloc Parliament, and second an explanation of how to make it work with clique.

  1. Go to your spellbook. 
  2. Click on the clique tab
  3. Go to the 'Bind Other' button at the bottom
  4. Chose 'Run custom macro' from the menu 
  5. Copy/Paste the following into the macro box:
    /tar [@mouseover,exists]
    /click ActionButton4 LeftButton
    /targetlasttarget
  6. Set it to a keybind with the 'Set Binding' button like you normally do in clique
  7. Make sure that the original spell 'Holy Word: Chastise' is on your action bars at the button that you specified in the macro (in my example I have it on button 4 of the main action bar)
  8. Enjoy!
Once again, thank you soooo much Zelmaru, this has been an annoyance for a while now, and I cannot get my head around too many keybinds, hence using clique and keybinds, but this one was just bugging the hell out of me. 

Merry Christmas!