Nogamara

That Midnight pre-patch event

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This week I spent a bit of time in Dornogal, sorting all my gear from this expansion, converting to set pieces and upgrading stuff but I’m missing a few bits and pieces.

So today I checked out the prepatch event and it’s kinda… bad?

Story is meh, but that’s ok, the quest line itself is short, but then I get to two weeklies – kill 3 rares and also a combined “kill 8 rares and/or do WQs in that zone” so I dutifully do my 4 or so WQs and need some rares (only managed to grab one while doing the WQs) and then I notice they’re only spawning every 10 minutes, one at a time. What? Got one, missed one due to looking at the other screen, then I set my phone alarm and go tthe last two. But I was just waiting for 20min. Engaging gameplay!

And then I don’t even need most of the gear.

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WoW Addons for Midnight – Part 1

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So with all the addon changes and WeakAuras gone I decided to just start at zero.

Made a backup of my WTF and Interface folder and nuked them (minus keybindings). Apparently I had moved to the Blizzard bars in DF already, so nothing to do.

So here’s a list of Addons I have currently installed, partially kept them, partially replaced some WeakAuras.

  • AlterEgo (M+, Alts) – keeping, trial
  • Baganator (Bags) – keeping
  • Bazooka (Bar for Icons) – keeping
  • BetterCharacterPanel (Character Stats + Gear) – keeping
  • BugGrabber/BugSack (Errors) – keeping
  • Frogski’s Cursor Trail (finding my cursor) – WA replacement, trial
  • Leatrix Maps (Map) – Mapster replacement, trial
  • LiteMount (Mounts) – keeping
  • LoggerHeadLite (Logging Raids) – keeping
  • Masque (eyecandy) – keeping
  • Plumber (some QoL) – keeping, trial
  • SexyMap (Minimap) – keeping
  • SimulationCraft (sims) – keeping
  • Teleport Menu (Travel) – keeping
  • WoWthing_Collector (out of game) – keeping

Not a lot of new stuff… yet, because I have not even looked at Unit Frames and the CooldownManager and Nameplates.

Maybe I can work without a unit frame addon and as long as I am not healing, the raid frames were also ok for me.

The big things that are missing:

  • displaying my buffs and procs and cooldowns (especially tank defensives)
  • “class weakaura packs” displaying e.g. Rage or Combo Points and Cooldowns
  • some QoL stuff from WeakAuras, like weekly profession quests and treasures
  • Details (Damage Meter)
  • BigWigs/LittleWigs (Boss timers)
  • HandyNotes (not needed now, but probably at launch)
  • WorldQuestTracker (I never liked it but I need something like it)
  • RaiderIO (when M+ starts)
  • TomTom (Navigation)
  • WarpDeplete (better M+ timer display)
  • Prat (Chat)

And then there is the long list of stuff I’ve either had multiples of or think I have covered, we’ll see:

  • Altoholic (WoWthing & Baganator)
  • DataStore
  • EnhanceQoL (Plumber)
  • Mapster (Leatrix Maps)
  • SavedInstances (AlterEgo)

And then… for about 7 WeakAuras I had I just wrote my own Addon that I hope I won’t really have to update for the whole expansion.

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Mostly Guild Wars 2

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Today I managed to finish the Seasons of the Dragons achievement, netting me a nice Legendary Amulet, and my fourth Legendary overall. I’ve already said it will be hard to keep up the pace – I came back to the game in October and managed to get one Legendary per month. Eikasia in October, Sunrise in November, my Heavy WvW Helm in December, and now this. Next week is the WvW Rush event, and I guess I’ll try to make as much time as possible to do WvW with full buffs and get some more WvW tickets, although I doubt I can break 400-500.

Overall I’ve logged in most days and done my dailies, I don’t think I missed the Wizard’s Vault weeklies even once, and I’ve ran out of things to buy, so my gold stash has been growing.

For story progression, finished Chapter 6 (of 8) of Visions of Eternity today, so that’s two more chapters, and then it’s only Living World Season 1 missing.

It’s been hard to keep track of what I achieved and my next goals, it’s all going so fast.

I’ve been switching around chars quite a bit – Ranger (Untamed) for PvP, Warrior (Berserker/Paragon) for WvW, Guardian (Dragonhunter) for story and random stuff and I’ve been playing my Mesmer (Troubadour) for events quite a bit as well. Thief (Daredevil) is fun, but I just don’t have enough time for this or my Necro (Scourge).

On the other hand the WoW expansion is looming on the horizon and I stupidly forgot to use up my Legion Remix Bronze before I unsubscribed, so I have to spend a token 2 weeks earlier to not lose the stuff I wanted to buy. And I guess I need to finish the Trading Post for January anyway.

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2025 in review

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Another end of a year, another review post.

And another post where my editor view with many list items is broken and I have not found a solution – but at least the final post looks normal.

What I played a lot:

  • World of Warcraft (January through November)
  • Guild Wars 2 (October – December)
  • EVE Online (first half of the year)

Other games I played:

  • Diablo IV
  • SWTOR (roughly May to October, but less than the others)
  • Final Fantasy XIV

Gaming expenses in 2025:

  • WoW: 78 EUR
    • 6 months of subscriptions,
    • 6 months via tokens for ingame gold
  • Guild Wars 2: 150 EUR
    • no subs, but had to buy all 4 expansions I was missing. 3 on sale (20, 15, 20 EUR) and the ultimate of the latest – Visions of Eternity (75 EUR)
    • 20 EUR for additional gems for the holiday sale
  • EVE Online: 165 EUR
    • bought some PLEX in July, resubscribed all accounts for the rest of 2026, so actual spend for 2025: 0
  • SWTOR: 78 EUR
    • 6 months of subscription
  • FF XIV: 12 EUR
    • one month of subscription

By subscribing my EVE accounts for all of 2025 already in 2024 I kinda didn’t feel the need to buy anything, but at some PLEX sale I got stuff to pay for 2026. Again, it’s complicated bookkeeping and I hate it.

Summary:

  • Amount of MMOs played: 5
  • Amount of MMO subscriptions paid: 6 (WoW) + 6 (SWTOR) + 1 (FFXIV) + 36 (EVE) = 49
  • Amount of games purchased: 0
  • Amount of MMO expansions purchased:
  • Amount of money for in-game currency: 185 EUR
  • Amount of free games I didn’t play: didn’t grab so many
  • Amount of games I purchased and then didn’t play: 0, I think

So the total comes down to 483 EUR, that’s 40 EUR per month – not a lot.

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A few milestones

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  • Finished End of Dragons and Secrets of the Obscure, currently in Janthir Wilds
  • First character has unlocked all 4 Elite specializations – Mesmer, Warrior has 3, all others except the new Engineer have 2
  • First character to sport a full ascended set (my Mesmer again, because my Guardian has 2 Exotics for special reasons)
  • Unlocked my Wizard’s Portal Tome, although it currently only holds like 4 locations – but no more shuffling teleports in my shared inventory slots
  • Nearly WvW Rank 60
  • Nearly at 10000 Achievement points

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Heritage Armor Revisited

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I had posted about Heritage Armor several times and the last time I was still missing some of them.

Just logged through all characters (one per race) and apparently after posting about Humans I had already done Undead, Troll, and Draenei… and probably got all the Allied Race ones when I dinged max level.

According to the Warcraft Wiki only Dracthyr is missing one now.

Also just noticed the latest version of the Catch-up gear thing let’s you do “I’ll decide later” and not forgo the chance. About time, but thank you Blizzard devs.

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    Raiding Manaforge Omega – Week 16 – AOTC

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    We did it.

    Did the first three for the Vault because our 12th raider was late, then the skip, so had to kill Nexus-King – that’s 4. And then Dimensius died on the 96th pull, last try of the evening, 1 minute before the usual end time, so last or second to last pull of the night – finally. Another AOTC bagged, took 4 months though. Luckily no one was missing (except the poor sod who stopped raiding due to a prolonged hospital visit) so we don’t have to rekill, and now it’s just clearing the achievements in Normal.

    Then it’s only M+ until the end of the season, and I’m really happy I can cut down on weekly appointments in December, it’s packed enough every year.

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    Too busy to post

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    While I did have a lot of fun playing Guild Wars 2 again (of course, otherwise why would I?), unlocking the Skyscale has simply cranked that up to 200%. I have often said that travel time is one of the worst things for me in an MMO, and this is no exception.

    I played my Mesmer a lot in 2022 when I last actively played, and had unlocked the Chronomancer elite spec, but apparently the build I had had fallen out of style and more importantly, I couldn’t really play with it anymore when I tried last month – but there was a new Elite spec unlocked with Visions of Eternity, the Troubadour. Playing a “bard” sounded awesome and even what little footage I had seen I also liked a lot. So I took my Skyscale and just did a quick tour of the End of Dragons zones (an expansion I have not really played yet, but I had caught one Hero Point train a while ago, so at least I had seen something…) to grab 22 of the 25 Hero Points I needed (so 250 in total, as every one after the base game gives 10 points) and have been playing it since, and I really like it. The skills are fun and I don’t die all the time. Maybe it also has a little to do with the gear, but going from full Exotics to 6 Ascended gear pieces + Ascended main hand weapon should not make a huge difference. Anyway, I’ll take it.

    Then I did a similar tour of the Path of Fire zones for my Ranger to unlock Galeshot. This is my PvP main that I use for structured PvP and also for WvW and I wanted some more ranged damage, although I wasn’t unhappy with Untamed.

    With all classes except Elementalist at 80 there is not much to level (and I’m not currently in the mood to do it), but there are still some goals I’m currently working on, actively or “when I get time”

    • The Seasons of Dragons meta achievement – currently 3/24
    • Vision (the legendary accessory) – just started
    • finish Icebrood Saga – 2/6

    Yeah, this draft post sat as a draft and I was so busy playing that I forgot to finish it.

    Icebrood Saga is done and I plan to finish End of Dragons tomorrow or on the weekend. Which means then it’s only 1.5 expansions left until the one that released a couple weeks ago.

    I specced my first healer/boon support – got the Paragon Elite spec for my Warrior and slapped on (nearly) full Minstrel gear. Fun in WvW. Also finished the first collection of an Ascended weapon in PoF, working on the second one now.

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    Raiding Manaforge Omega – Week 14 & 15

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    Week 14: 7 kills, 3 wipes on Nexus-King, then 22 wipes on Dimensius, once to phase three.

    Week 15 we finally focused on Dimensius with 16 pulls on Sunday, 4 times phase three and one time 18%.

    Tuesday had 10 more pulls, again 3 times in phase three and a close 3.7% wipe that could have been a kill. Clearing the start for gear after that.

    I’m not really logging in much – basically 4h of raid and 2-4h of M+. We knocked out a few more 11s and 12 and are around 2850 now.

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