WoW – Battle Stance

Ding again, major reorganization, and stuff

Still sick at home so I played a little more WoW. My Dwarven Hunter is now 120, which makes 19 max-level toons. He got the full Benthic treatment and again I’m missing rings (268+284), was a bit lucky with Trinket WQs (360+370), which makes him sit at 371 iLvl (370 MH Bow as well).

For some reason I was fed up with bag space on several toons today, so I made a spreadsheet of all 27 (19 110+ and 8 lowbies) non-bank toons on my main server and thanks to the Altoholic addon I could quickly jot down who has which bag and size, without having to log through them all. To my surprise I didn’t grab the free 28 bag from a Tiragarde Sound Rare (Totes) on most of them, and a few were also missing the free 26 slot Legion bag from Addie in Highmountain. Interestingly WoD didn’t seem to have one, as the next fitting one is the 24 slot Grummlepack from Pandaria’s Kun-Lai Summit. So I killed Totes roughly 13 times, did the Addie quest like 5 times, handed out some 30 slot Netherweave bags I’ve been dutifully crafting and then most of it looked fine. Found enough non-BoE/BoP 16 slot bags to shuffle them around to all the ones who didn’t have all their bank slots unlocked and so on. I didn’t write down the exact numbers but I think most toons gained 4-10 slots in their bags and also in the bank. The only problem was still my Rogue main who didn’t benefit from the upgrades (gonna get the 28 slot at some point, but he’s on all 26+ already anyway) and was still at 0 free bank space. Yes, I’m keeping too much shit since Vanilla. In the end I managed to sell 10 armor pieces, throw out 5 bogus buff items and move ~15 Tier armor pieces to the Void Storage, which is also 3/4 full. But in the end even he reclaimed 29 slots. This took like 5h in total but it’s worth it. I also managed to redistribute some stuff and overall this will save time. But I still have like 60 greens to disenchant.

Also the 15 year anniversary event started today and it gives a nice +15% exp and rep buff for the next 2 months. I took advantage of that and also cleaned out some WQs and Emissaries (it’s also +50% bonus WQ rep). And I finally brought some Nazjatar allies to Rank 3 to get the Necklace bonus trait on the toons who are Azerite Level 55 already. Also finally cleaning out the quest logs.

With the Hunter at 120 – what’s next? My 3rd Rogue will be put on the backburner now, she’s at 390 iLvl and in a state I can absolutely see her as “finished”, being on the remote server and all – I already put in ~10h more at max level than originally planned.

110 Blood Elf Demon Hunter – my last missing Horde class, tempting
70 Draenei DK – with Horde being so lonely I kinda prefer my Ally guild right now, also tempting
72 Kul Tiran Mage – leveling only in Random Dungeons so far, could be pumped up a little
73 Worgen Priest – pass for now I think
82 Mag’har Orc Rogue – staying with Random Dungeons I think
42 Nightborne Priest – Random Dungeons it is
34 Zandalari Troll Paladin – more Random Dungeons
34 Dark Iron Dwarf Monk – guess what? Random Dungeons!

NogamaraNovember 7, 2019WoWLeave a comment

Small updates only

I’ve not done a lot of interesting things the last 2 weeks, mostly because of a nasty flu that didn’t so much knock me down to bed but more made my head completely dizzy and unable to concentrate on anything but a few dailies and grinding. I didn’t even dare to login to Classic because I found the questing to be too hard. Yay.

I’m still trying to catch up all the professions from Legion, and some from Draenor (mostly Alliance) so I was busy gathering some mats, at the same time doing some Broken Isles WQs and Emissary Quests. And a few Mythic 5man solo dungeon runs because those are a joke at 120.

Legion Mining seems to be a pain and my Human Rogue is lacking most of the points, Draenor Inscription seems to be fine with 1-2 points per day if you remember. On the other hand Mining will fuel my lackluster Legion Jewelcrafting which seems to need a ton of Ore to prospect. Kinda glad I don’t even have a BS on alliance side. Overall there seems to be a reason that despite playing a few toons in Legion I never have been so sloppy with professions, because they were horrible. BfA is better, but not by a huge margin – but I at least have the gathering ones maxed on nearly all toons and am well beyond 100 on some crafting ones.

Draenor Cooking is mostly mailing the correct staple of mats around and maybe buying a few things at the Garrison. Horde has been done for a while but I only have 2 Alliance garrisons, and need the last 5 points of Draenor Cooking on the 7th Alliance toon.

And lastly I’m grinding out Legionfall, Argussian Reach and Army of the Light rep on the Rogue and do a few Broken Isles Emissary Quests on the Shaman, my Legion Horde main who is progressed most. Need to tick those checkboxes 😛

NogamaraNovember 2, 2019WoWLeave a comment

Classic woes and a fresh start

It’s been 2 weeks already with the whole Blizzard kerfuffle and while I don’t feel the need to justify why I won’t boycott Blizzard in the form of cancelling my WoW subscription, I did want to write down some things. I think the boycott is a good idea, I also don’t agree on what they did and how they did it. The problem is just that the game’s too important for me right now.

While I had stopped playing WoW as my bread and butter login daily MMO in 2014 (when I stopped raiding) and have only come back as a 3 month tourist for WoD and Legion, I have been subscribed for quite a while and it’s the game I play most right now and not much else provides fun. But that’s not the main point, the main point is that I’m finally playing Classic with friends who never shared a server with me in Retail. I started in Vanilla, they started when WotLK launched. I visited them on their server a few times for a bit (even did a cool thing once), but understandably never stuck around – so Classic is the first time we get to really play together, not just talk about WoW (which we have been doing IRL for over 10 years now).

Speaking of said guild group in Classic, we all hit 43-44 and had an Uldaman run scheduled when one had to take an extended break for an unspecified amount of time. Because we were only 5 people at level to begin with (still waiting for our Rogue to come back at all), we decided to put an official halt on this group until he returns, just maybe level to 45.

The good news is that we do have some alts and so we started converging on the same level and already did Ragefire Chasm on the weekend. 17 Warrior Tank, 15 Hunter, 15 Feral Druid Healer, 13 Affliction Warlock. Went pretty good for a 4man run. Next step is Wailing Caverns at 20, we’ll see if we 4man it again. Also the guild has 9 people in total, so we might pick up some of the others on the way – we’ll see.

NogamaraOctober 23, 2019WoWBlizzard, WoWClassicLeave a comment

Seventeen and eighteen

Last tuesday I dinged for the 17th time – my Blood Elf Retri Paladin and last night for the 18th time – my Gnome Sub Rogue. Paladin was kinda smooth, relaxing, and easy again, the Rogue was stressful and died a lot. Really not sure if it’s me or the class this expansion. But it’s my only Gnome and I wanted the heritage armor.

Immolation & Sin’dorei gear mix very well

Too cheap to transmog yet, need Benthic gear first.

So now I have the heritage armor for Blood Elves, Tauren, Gnomes, and Dwarves. Getting my 120 Worgen Druid to Exalted is probably next, as the Goblin is 86 and on the wrong server and the Allied Race chars all still way below that level.

NogamaraOctober 19, 2019WoWLeave a comment

Argus, we have a problem

As I had finished up the Broken Shore rep to Revered a few days ago I wanted to take a look at Argus and maybe progress far enough into the quest line so I could do the gated emissary quest that popped up today. There are 2 Allied Races to be unlocked after all

So off to the Exodar I went, got myself ported to the Vindicaar and then… I somehow misclicked and was in Dalaran again. Now how to get there again? Relog to Alliance, ask the guild: “There’s a portal near the Dalaran flight master.” Nope, no portal. Checking the internet: there really should be a portal. Also, if you manage to not hand in the first quest there you’re out of luck and have no portal – I’m not the first one with this problem. Great. I didn’t want to abandon the quest for fear of something going wrong. Do I have to go back to the Exodar? To Orgrimmar? Dalaran? No idea how the original quest was called and where I got it. Risky.

So I don’t have a lot of BattleNet friends in general, and nearly all my former Horde guildies have stopped playing or started new toons that I didn’t have on my friends list, but I was lucky. One guy who wasn’t even in my last (actually current, but dead) Horde guild and with whom I’ve kept in touch over the years – and he has a Warlock at 120! So I sent a tell around noon and waited. I was in luck as he came back to the Blizzard app a few hours later, logged in the Warlock, had actually gone to Argus before on that toon and was willing to summon me. Now we just needed to find 2 people who could also go there and click. To my dismay (and surprise) I only saw 10 people in Dalaran in the 5 minutes I spent asking in general and then whispering every single one of them. Nobody even answered. OK, maybe some didn’t see it or were afk. He was more lucky in Argus and could actually recruit 2 people to summon me there. I handed in my quest and set my Hearthstone to there. Haven’t checked yet if I have the portal in Dalaran now, but I hope so.

NogamaraOctober 12, 2019WoWLeave a comment

Level 40 dungeons – Guild edition

Last night the guild gathered together to tackle the Armory and Cathedral wing of Scarlet Monastery, and maybe Razorfen Downs.

We’re still short one Rogue who has to catch up over 10 levels by now – so we might just move him to the alt group, because even those have surpassed him already, but he said his internet connection is finally fixed and he will come back.

Gladly we have another warm body, a feral druid, who has no caught up with us well. The original plan last week was to go at 38, but for scheduling reasons we had postponed to this Friday and surprisingly we had 5 people in the right specs, all at the same level (a first).

Warrior tank with 31 points in Arms
Shaman who uses shocks more than heals
Mage with water vendor spec
Troll Hunter with a very beautiful hairdo
Feral Druid

I’ll never be able to tell an interesting story about an overall uneventful dungeon run like Wilhelm can, so I won’t even try. Armory was quick and easy but people used to retail were a little confused that there was only one boss at the end. Also my explanation of what could go wrong with the whirling and the adds was unneeded as Herod went down without a problem. He dropped a Ravager – nice, but only a sidegrade for my Whirlwind Axe I guess.

Next up was the Cathedral. Being cautious I mostly pulled stuff around a corner both at the start of the courtyard and at the cathedral entrance and thus we didn’t have a single runner, add, or tricky situation. I even remembered to find Fairbanks and he dropped a cloth shoulder upgrade.

Again calling out the tactics for Mograine and Whitemane proved to be useless, they went down very very quickly. Sadly we didn’t get a Chapeau or the shield, but the Scarlet Leggings were a huge upgrade for me, despite being Mail and not Plate and our Shaman was happy with a Hand of Righteousness.

Level 40 and a Mage means portals, so luckily we could get to Undercity quickly, hand in our quest (new Main Hand Sword for me), take a portal to Orgrimmar and fly to Camp Taurajo. Just that Camp Mojache in Feralas also starts with “Camp” so our Hunter and Druid flew there instead. Only that our Druid noticed it right away and could fix the error in the Crossroads while the Hunter was making fun of him… until noticing too late he had made the same error.

Once all were there we did the Ambassador quest and the kill quest outside the instance, then made our way to the iconic entrance which of course forgot to take a screenshot of. But I had forgotten it but the moment I saw the big board head I remembered. Well done, WoW zone designers.

Razorfen Downs isn’t as 100% straightforward as the earlier dungeons, with the escort quest having you backtrack, the gong we had forgotten and nearly ignored, the detour to the hill with the skeletons. Would love to see a stream of a group who had never done this and not read up on anything. The bosses and groups didn’t really put up a real fight until we came to the final spiraling hill. Most of the mobs being undead and the instance counting as inside we had no sheep and no roots, only a 10s ice trap. So it was mostly charging in and burning down 1 or 2 as fast as possible and maybe not taunt off every single mob but let the group offtank one. Some of those groups really hurt, the only close calls were the last group before the last boss – it looked big, it was big, it hurt. And while doing it I remembered it being that way, but we made it without deaths. Finally the last boss – burning him down seems to be better than trying to handle all the adds.

Overall I’m equal part surprised and amazed that we made it this far. WoW Classic launched on August 27th, 2019 and six and a half weeks later we managed to do every dungeon we were supposed to do (skipped Deadmines and Stockade, but did a few of the early ones twice) – with largely the same group of four people, with the fifth slot sometimes filled by 2 more people.

This is also the first time I’m in a true Friends & Family guild made up 100% of people who are couples, have known each other for 10+ years online or offline, or work together. Sometimes multiple of those apply. We’re only 9 people – but we originally had only planned to be exactly 5. Apparently I’ve had to wait 13 years for this to happen that the majority of people plays on my server and I don’t have to chase them down somewhere, visit for a week, and let that toon wither. Too bad I couldn’t grab a few more, but this is a German server and having played on EU for so long, all my ex-guildies have of course chosen an EU one. Also it’s been so long that I wouldn’t say I’m close to more than one or two, so it’s only a minor letdown to not have them here.

NogamaraOctober 12, 2019WoWWoWClassicLeave a comment

Broken Isles Pathfinder, Part 2

After a few days of Broken Shore dailies (did I count? The blog says nothing, so I guess 1-2 weeks?) I hit Revered with the Armies of Legionfall last night and can now finally fly in Legion content.

As I didn’t play a lot during Legion and WoD that still leaves me with those 2 expansions where I didn’t hit Exalted with most (or any) factions, so I guess there’s still some WQ grinding to do, as I want to at least catch up my Rogue. Also the Argussian thing is still missing and afaik I need Exalted with the Armies for one of the two Allied Races I am missing. Never gets boring. Well, it could, but now that I can fly it should be easy to do some more WQs in the Broken Isles and Broken Shore. Slow and steady.

NogamaraOctober 11, 2019WoWLeave a comment

Ridiculous speed

4 days and 2 h until Level 40 (that’s nearly 99 hours of /played).

The dungeon group couldn’t continue last weekend due to illness and internet problems, so we went to 40 instead of 37-38.

SM and RFD coming up next weekend, hopefully.

NogamaraOctober 8, 2019WoWWoWClassicLeave a comment

Professions, Professions, Professions

Sometimes I have a plan and then I’m kinda set on following it through. Darkmoon Faire starts tomorrow and so I was checking all the toons’ profession levels and see if there are some checkpoints I can pass and then grab the 5 free points in a harder stretch. Also I’ve been bad with leveling cooking this expansion. And fishing. And some of the professions in general.

So now it’s 2 am and I managed to get some stuff done: