LFG? I'm Fine Thanks

Just when I think that I might try to queue for a random dungeon I read horror stories of players being generally nasty in every which way in PuG's and I opt to wait for a guild run. 

Say you're at a wedding and you're sitting with four or five people you've never met.  You wouldn't eat your meal in silence and then vote to remove one person so there would be an extra dessert.  You would make poliete conversation and then comment about what they were wearing AFTER they left the table.

(Okay, maybe the dessert analogy is a bad one, because I can get ruthless when it comes to sweets - but you guys get the point.)

I'm sure they are not all that bad, but no one ever says "best pug ever!".  The "best" pugs now seem to be ones where no one talks and you don't get kicked out before loot drops.  That still seems very ugly to me.

I'm still here!

How do people get ready for Christmas and continue to play WoW?  I'm having a hard time figuring out where all the hours in the evening go between cooking and cleaning and wrapping and shopping

I did manage to fit in the Winter Veil achievement - woot! 

WTB 1 Extra Hour

Friday evening to do list:

 

Go to grocery store

Make genoise chocolate cake

Make dairy-free chocolate cake

Make meringue mushrooms

Make coconut ice cream

Mix up artichoke & spinach dip

Caramelize onions

Slice cheese for platter

Frost sugar cookies

Make chocolate mousse

Make mocha cakes

KILL MALYGOS!

 

I think I can fit it all in*.  I've been prepping for our party tomorrow and Christmas in general so WoW is taking a bit of a hit this week (and next).  I did manage to correctly perform the "Fa-la-la-la-la Ogri'la" Achievement last evening and I only need 22 more kills as a gnome to finish off Winter Veil. 

 

Then all I have to do is wait patiently to OPEN PRESENTS!!!!!!!!!

 

*I will not fit it all this in!

To Vent or Not to Vent

Our [wonderful] guild is full of friends and family and couples.  Because we are also all altaholics at any one time we have one or two combinations of Tank/Healer, Tank/DPS, Healer/Healer and DPS/Healer couples.   It can make some fights easier. For example, our first time fighting Ingis my husband tanked and I shattered the adds.  He would call out to me when and where he was pulling the adds and I was there to help.  Healers can talk to each other if things start to go south and a tank/healer couple generally have a good sense of what the other person is doing (ie – are they ready or are they in the kitchen getting beers).   

 

We've gone through every one of the dungeons in WoW and many of the raids without using Vent.  Our method is for one or two people to explain the fight to anyone new (or in need of a refresher), people ask questions and then we go in.  Sometimes we have a learning curve with a wipe or two but once we all know our role we can down the boss.   I think that in this way getting achievements or doing content the first time really feels like a genuine achievement.  You have to remember things like "am I supposed to stand still during FLAME WREATH or run around and kill the raid" or "I know the Zombie Chow is heading toward Gluth but Decimate is not up – I'll let the kiters do their job and continue burning the boss down".

 

Of course, this would all be easier if we all communicated through Vent to each other.   We could say, "Don't. Stand. In. Stuff" and know that we were heard, rather than frantically type it and hope that we notice it in party/raid chat.  Sometimes lines of text get lost in guild chat or in item rolls which is bad if you miss an "afk 1 sec".  

 

Pros of Vent:

Explaining fights would be easier.

Easier to correct mistakes or apologizing for said mistakes.

We could understand sarcasm better.

We could hear the angelic voices of our guild (and I know at least one of them has a great singing voice!)

 

Cons of Vent:

Doesn't it cost money?

We might lose our fast typing skills!

People might find out that I'm a girl!

 

With Deadly Boss Mods, raid warnings, quick typers and an overall very capable guild, we may not need Vent.  However, it might be worth it to hear everyone especially while celebrating when we down a boss for the first time!

Fa-la-la-la-la Ogri-WTF!!

You do not have to do the group quest chain in Blades Edge to open up the Ogrila quests now (hooray!).  A few of us grouped up to help some alts farm the shards and also because it's more fun with a group. After we had collected enough shards we all set off to do the bombing run. 

 

As the three others got their achievement and I was ready to hit "Print Scrn" to document my achievement but nothing happened because I had dismounted before handing in!

 

Durr – I felt a little dumb and much eyerolling (on my part) ensued. You can guide this hunter by the hand and dress me up in fancy gear, but I will still manage to be a bonehead from time to time!

 

Ah well, I'll just do it this evening and perhaps finish off the last 10 quests there for the Outland Loremaster Achievement.

 

BTW - You can now use your mount in the Pools of Vision in Thunder Bluff! Yippee!

wait a minute....

My druid got to exalted with Sons of Hodir this morning.  I know the shoulder enchants are bind on account now so you can choose if you want to grind rep with these friendly giants.  It's still a nice chunk of gold to farm and the herbs - they are plentiful.

Today I noticed a few changes in the dailies:

When flying through Brunnhildar Village you do not turn into a blue lady.  At least while in flight form.  This is sad only for the comedic affect of flying through the air like Superman when passing through that village.  I didn't test it out, but I hope you remain hilariously oversized while mounted.

The Hot and Cold daily now requires 6 essence of ice instead of 5.  The drop rate seems to be 100% until you get to 6 (note that the essences of ice do not stack in 6's so you'll need another spot in your inventory).

I'm sure the drake for Thrusting Hodir's Sword takes on a different route than before.  I used to start that quest just outside the Frozen Fortress, circle around and end up in almost the same place but today I ended up in Brunnhildar.

The end.

My First Post (12 months late)

Aww,

Here's something I drafted back in January when I started having notions of starting a blog. How far we've come in a year!

____________________________________________________

Okay – first post is always the hardest  - doing this like taking off a band aid.  You just have to get it over with.

This blog is just various items – it'll be probably be my World of Warcraft adventures mixed with posts about cupcakes and/or pastry goods with a smattering of crafts.  I've invested a lot of time, money and caloric intake into each.

WoW-wise I don't have much to offer because I'm crap at stats and strategies.  I play a hunter and a druid as my two "mains"…but there are lots, lots more alts.  Some are banks and some are jokes and some just sit in Ogrimmar until I can bear going back to Stonetalon Mountains.

Pastry-wise I know a thing or two (about consuming them).  Over the past few months I've jumped on the cupcake bandwagon to try a few different things.  My favourite has been the Sprinkles Strawberry cupcake recipe because of it's very flavourful and very, very pink icing (it tastes exactly like strawberry ice cream).  My next adventure might be these chocolate bread pudding cupcakes.  Still not sure what way I'm going to go.

I used to do way more crafts and sewing before playing WoW, but I still love to peruse the aisles at Michaels and I. Love. Glitter.

 

We've recently started getting in the Wrath heroics.  It's been fun and frustrating and disappointing at the same time.  I'm still waiting for that crossbow to drop in Heroic UK, but so far, nada.  I'm not sure what my first piece of badge gear will be – most likely the neck piece, although the tier 7 gloves do look tempting. 

Sweet!

Blizzard is holding a dessert contest!  WoW and desserts are two of my favourite things!  I don't know if I'll have time to do anything with Chrismtas a-comin' but I will try!

The prize is nice, many of those books are great. Currently I'm just barely choking down the War of the Ancients trilogy.  Richard Knaak's power to bore knows no bounds.  At this point I would rather quest in Azshara than read about her.

With This Ring, I Thee Heal

I healed a Forge of Souls alt run last night. Two ret palidans, 1 death knight and a feral tank.   It was fine until the last boss when the palidans died followed by the tank dying just as the boss went down.  The Death Knight (my husband) remained at full health. 

 

Did I subconsciously heal him more than the others because we're married and I'm honour bound to save his life at all costs?  Or did he stay out of the purple stuff?  I guess we'll never know.

The Devourer of Souls is hands down the funniest bit of voice acting in WoW.

ZOONS!

Chawa must have been reading over my shoulder because I was drafting a post on the exact same topic. Out of the patch notes the one that caught my eye today was the new emote to say “You’re Welcome”. Using it to be polite is awesome, but even better when you can be passive aggressive and/or sarcastic at the same time. For example, a fun time to use it would be just before you kill a rogue in a BG. “You’re Welcome!” [KILL SHOT]. (jerk)


So “thanks”, Chawa, for posting before me and “thanks” for saying it much better than I could have. Actually, that last “thanks” should not have been in air quotes because that part wasn’t sarcastic – or was it? (heart you!)


The patch is here and the heroic dailies are gone. I did not manage to get the Proof of Demise achievement. The few times Old Kingdom was the daily I shunned it for being ridiculously hard. I love our healers but they are just VILE AND MEAN AND IMPOSSIBLE TO KILL during the Insanity phase.

No matter – with all the new content and instances we will soon all forget about those old dungeons, like Occulus, which despite any changes will always be stupid and most likely smell like farts.

Don't You Wish Your Girlfriend Cooked Dinner Like Me?

Our guild has a lot of foodies and, from personal experience, a lot of great cooks. Guild chat conversations sometimes get steered towards food discussions and suggestions. A long time ago I had aspirations of starting a cooking blog. As you can see it’s not going getting a lot of love right now, but I am going to try to post a few things like recipes/pictures/etc. These are recipes that I intend to make for our Christmas dinner (which will probably be either on Boxing Day or later) and around the holidays.

For The Christmas Tree!

To get into the Christmas and Winter Veil spirit I made some Horde ornaments for our "tree".

With a bit of sparkly red felt, a little jingle bell, some thread and some ribbon you too can make this fun craft!


A few of them tacked to our tree (which is made of cardboard, wrapped in paper).




A close up to show you all the sparkles - it's not Christmas without glitter! Yay Glitter!

I hope you guys like them!

10 more sleeps!

Christmas is coming upon us quickly and soon the stores and streets will be full of cheery shoppers and tables will be bending under delicious turkeys, pies and sweets.

This is our first Christmas together in our own place so we've decided to stay in the city. We'll eat a big breakfast starring bacon, with an appearance by hollandaise sauce but croissants will certainly steal the show. After coffee and presents we'll most likely turn to WoW for a bit and then to our parents for tasty turkey dinner! We'll end the evening as we've done in the past by watching the Doctor Who Christmas episode. I'm already feeling cozy and festive just by typing this!

But before Christmas is here we've got another fun world event jingling towards us! Winter Veil!! You may have your shopping done for your sweet heart, but do you have your Winter Veil presents wrapped yet? Azeroth is like a giant mall and there are no lines at any of the stores! In fact most of the gifts you can give are ones that are free - as long as you are fine with a bit of bloodshed. I know you are!!!

A few stacks of wool cloth might be nice for a lowbie alt to help them level first aid or tailoring.

If you've got a high level tailor why not make their alt a few frostweave bags? I always find questing and grinding much more enjoyable when I do not have to struggle with inventory space.

Or maybe run them through a low level dungeon for some nice twink items. With all that empty inventory from their new bags they are free to collect all that wonderful garbage that at one point you may have coveted.

But what if your husband/wife/girlfriend/boyfriend/BFF has 10 characters all over level 70 and most sitting at 80? What do you give them if they already have 20 stacks of chilled meat for the cooking dailies?

Most of the ideas I have either use an exorbitant amount of game gold or even a considerate amount of real money. The two in-game pets that Blizzard released are pretty cute. There may be some pets on the AH house to get that could potentially set you back a bit of gold - everyone likes pets right?. A piece of crafted epic gear for a high level alt would be a nice gift too!

The best gift of all, of course, it that of time. Spending time with your significant nerd either in the game or snuggled up eating cookies and drinking eggnog is the best gift to give and won't cost you anything! (aww)

Besides, Winter Veil is all about having fun and wearing a gnome costume!

Death Knight <3

Coincidently with Chawa's recent post, I have fallen a bit smitten with my Death Knight too! Ploughing my way through Outland has been very enjoyable. This morning I was 63 and now I'm halfway to 68. (Yes I played all day - what of it!?)

I think that I would like trying to tank with him in Northrend. I like the ability of pulling casters more reliably. Feral tanking is fun, but there are times when I just cannot see what is going on other than how good my behind looks.

We're off for birthday dinner at our favorite place: The Hungry Chili! Hot numbing chicken here I come! Followed by hot numbing cake perhaps?

edit: hello Northrend! Goodbye Outland you peepee-soaked heck hole!

Yippee! Our second venture into Ulduar gave us a few achievements! Hooray for Hot Pocket!
("Why did she link that?" /singsong voice)


Have I mentioned that AWESOME GUILD IS AWESOME??? I love when we get bosses down after a few "learning curves" - I could hug each and everyone of you in person but that would be a lot of traveling!