The Angry Dwarfs

A little something that I’ve remembered while playing with screenshots and replacing the images on the site’s first post. This happened on this Tuesday, when we were in Naxxramas with a pug group. Forgive me the absolutely crappy quality, but I’ve had to do some heavy editing on this – at the same time all my auctions were ending, resulting in a flood of yellow text on my chat box.

I still don’t really know what to think about that. It’s not that he doesn’t have the Cold Weather Flying skill, or the epic riding skill and mount (I wouldn’t be as much surprised if it were the latter one), but I’ve checked his armory page and he doesn’t have any flying skill at all.

How in the name of the Light can one level to 80 and not have enough gold from quests to get that? My view might be a bit skewed, since I use the Auction House to have all the gold I need, but there are so many quests and so many items that you can vendor… It should be possible to have enough gold to buy at least normal flying and learn the Northrend flying skill, just from questing your way from 70 to 80.

The other thing that is bothering me here is that the Paladin is not even slightly concerned with that. He doesn’t need it – the NPCs gave him a mount usable in Storm Peaks, Icecrown and Scholazar, and he can be summoned to the instance or wait for a ressurection. It’s certainly not a stance that will win people’s friendship, especially when everyone else has to run from the graveyard. I’m really glad that it was just a pug and possibly I won’t have to group with him ever again.

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The last week and a half was quite eventful, even if it was a bit repetetive. The guild has done another complete Naxx-25 run, this time clearing the instance in two evenings, so we had time for some tries at Malygos. Unfortunately the 25-man version was quite frustrating – we’ve had problems with positioning the sparks correctly, and the boss enraged while we were in phase two killing the Lords and Scions. This was Sunday – not the best ending of the week I must say.

However on Tuesday we went there again, this time only with 10 people, and after first few tries we finally went into phase three. Getting used to riding the drakes took us another few tries, and we got the crazy dragon down. Unfortunately the [Hailstorm] didn’t drop, but I am satisfied with getting the [Surge Needle Ring] as well. ;)

Then comes Sheven – I did some more healing on him, including a crazy pug run of Black Temple, when at some point I was healing the whole 25-man group with the help of another level 70 resto druid. I’ve also joined a pug run of Naxx-10, but it was destined to fail from the start – the group has cleared two wings and Patchwerk, so we had to begin at Grobbulus, with only two healers and over an hour late. Obviously, we didn’t manage to kill the boss, but I consider it a good training for when I come into Naxxramas with my guildies. Since the last update, I’ve managed to grab both the [Helm of Anomalus] and [War Mace of Unrequited Love] from the Nexus, as well as some other upgrades here and there. 

Other than the planned raids, I barely have time in the week to do anything, so I’m mostly flying around Storm Peaks on Sheven and farming loads of herbs to fuel his Northrend Inscription Research and making of Darkmoon Cards. Swift Flight Form helps a lot in this, so I’m usually able to grab about 10 full stacks of herbs in an hour or so.

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…or he will come there and kill ya. ;)

`

Clearing Naxx-25 on this Sunday made our guild, the Conclave of Shadows, the third Alliance guild on Deathwing-EU to do that, and the tenth overall. Not bad for a group of older, mostly working people with families, kids and stuff. Sartharion is also dead, so now we only have to kill Malygos and then we can gear up while waiting for the Ulduar expansion.

The only bosses in Naxx-25 that shown some problem to us were the gear checks and DPS races – Patchwerk, Thaddius and Loatheb, and the rest was quite easy, compared to what we used to have to do in SSC or TK. Even then, it took us 3 evenings to fully clear the instance.

I’m really, really proud of what we can accomplish if we’re focused, and as I wrote earlier, we’re not exactly your typical hardcore raiders.

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This Saturday I’ve finally managed to level my druid up to 80. Of course I forgot to take a screenshot of that, even though I was thinking about it earlier this day. I wasn’t really expecting to ding there to be honest, I thought I would have to do one more quest. Apparently not. ;)

Anyway, after a short visit to Moonglade, I ran back to Dalaran, outfitted him with some leatherworking stuff I made earlier on the rogue and started to search for heroic pugs. I’ve also tried to pick some healing stuff from the AH, but found only the [Dragon Prow Amulet] and the [Reanimator's Cloak] there. That was actually quite weird, as usually Deathwing has more of these random blue things floating around, but oh well.

First thing I’ve ran wasn’t a heroic anyway, as I’ve found a group to normal Halls of Lightning, but it made me feeling a bit better about my healing skills, and the two finished quests with some Sons of Hodir rep attached to them are not in my quest log anymore. Not that I actually need that reputation for anything special, given that my Inscription’s shoulder enchants are much better and cheaper, but I like the Storm Peaks zone and all the quests there are just so awesome that I couldn’t resist doing them anyway. And it gives me an excuse to spend a lot of time flying around herbing. :]

Next thing was my first heroic instance that I healed – The Nexus. I love that instance, the looks, the bosses, the idea of “saving” poor Keristrasza, the music… And I would love it even more if the bosses would drop what I want when I’m there on the right character. Saithir still hasn’t got his [Sphere of Red Dragon's Blood], and of course it had to drop now. And so it did. :| At least I got the [Gloves of the Crystal Gardener] from one of the bosses, but of course no headpiece or the mace. 

After that I went for even more heroics in search of gear, which unfortunately wasn’t that much successful either. I found a good pug group and we did both Utgarde Keep and Drak’tharon Keep. The only drop I’ve got was the [Battlemap Hide Helm] from UK’s first boss, which isn’t even a tree headpiece, but it will do until I get something better. And I’ve got only 14 badges (well, emblems, but I am so used to calling them badges) even though the Nexus was a daily instance. Sigh, one more and I’d have the healing idol, but I guess that’s just my luck. I’ll try to get into another group after I finish up with this post. ;)

Overall, this was a fun evening even with the bad luck on the drops. I finally got my tree form, and nobody died too much in all the heroics I’ve done. And what is most important, I’ve had a LOTS of fun healing it all, even though I’m still scared as hell. So, happy dwarf signing off for the night!

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Of course, today being the first day of the new year, one should make some resolutions, and what kind of a dwarf I would be if I wouldn’t uphold this ancient tradition. I’m going to skip all the normal life ones since they are boring anyway, and stick to the interesting stuff about WoW.

1. Level up and gear up my druid and warrior to be ready whenever I want to help my guild with running Naxx-10 and other instances.
2. Wait until the 3.0.8 patch hits and make a Horde death knight on some nice PvE server.
3. Level said death knight to 80 and gear him up for tanking pug heroics and raids, and maybe find him some nice guild somewhere ;)
4. Keep this blog running ;)
5. Keep up with achievements on my rogue – there is still a lot of quests to be done in Northrend, and we’ll see what else he can get.
6. Raid my rogue up to wherever Blizzard wants us to raid and stab pointy things in the backs of more undeads and Titan constructs.
7. Make enough money for a mammoth and a chopper, not necessarily in that order.

The one that I’m waiting the most to happen is playing the Horde DK – I really feel like I’m missing half of this game by only playing Alliance, but I guess after leveling few alts from 1 to 70-something, leveling another one is not that attractive. The DK starting at 58 and having to only go through half of the Outland and then Northrend is a very nice bonus.

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