First raid - Terrace of Endless Spring

It`s school holidays (okay, this is an odd thing to say at age 35) and today I finally could get some time in this afternoon to try out the LFR thing.  

Queing for a Raid, I was added to do the Terrace of Endless Spring raid, which takes about an hour of focussed play, and managed to get through it without dying.  Not to shabby, but no way to get cocky.  

Looking For Raid raids are tuned down to allow the casual player to enjoy the contents of the raids as well compared to the hardcore raiders, and this means the loot drops there are level 483.  Being myself at that point, there where some things I could get some ilevels added to (notably my rings and trinkets can use serious boosts, as well as better gloves and headpiece, but I`m working on that one with the Shado-Pan for now) but even using all possible re-rolls of the mountains of charms I have collected so far, I only had a single decent drop upgrade.

Exit the Scholomance heroic staff, enter Jin`Ya, Orb of the Waterspeaker, a slight upgrade that did take my ilevel one up to 484.  Now if I`d start doing some more heroic dungeons, there are a few other things I can upgrade for now using the Justice Points, and I`m not sure if I`ll keep the shoulder token as well, as this is actually a downgrade from my current Golden Lotus reputation shoulders.

It was a fun experience though, and when I`ll get the chance, I`ll try to get another one in left of right during the comming holiday week, I`ll have to see about that.

The total loot for the raid - 483 shoes, a 483 dagger and a 483 Sha-Skin set Shoulder token as well as some 200 gold.  Pity though you don`t get reputations in that place...

To end, the photobombing supreme at the Sha of Fear, courtesy of Pesky Pug

Aries Mu revealed

Another of the Gold saints for the live action movie has been revealed this week, and it is time for the cloth repairer himself, Mu of Aries.

I kinda like what they did to him with the glasses, and his armour is okay in my book, definitly one of the better creations so far.

To have a look of the ones revealed so far; I still think Shura has been done the best.

A Card Gamble... that paid off

One of the things I tend to do to keep my 'for trade' pile up to volume, is browse the net for cheap sealed booster boxes, especially for World of Warcraft.

With the cardgame at an end, the boxes are experiencing a strange curvature.  While english boxes keep rising in price, the foriegn ones like spanish, italian and german are sinking faster then the Titanic in price (bar those including the better looking mounts like the Drake, Spectral Tiger etc).

So now and then, I buy 2 or 3 booster boxes from magiccardmarket and hope for the better loot to be 'dropped', a risk but at a price of around 15 to 20 euros for a box, a limited one.

So today a parcel arrived from germany, containing a box of Scourgewar and a box of March of the Legion, together (excluding shipping) totalling 34 euros.  Both sets have a 'crap common' loot card in the set, but also two pet loot cards in the uncommon and rare loot slot each, so if even one of them would come out of the box I would break even, all the rest would be bonus.

Now after cracking first the March of the Legion box, this was a disappointment: only a single loot card, the Paper Airplane toy.  But then it went steeply uphill!

I cracked open the Scourgewar box and got the common Tiny card once, then a Tuskarr Kite pet.  This pet is seen as about the rarest on WarcraftPets these days in 'seen in game' and is a card that goes around 50 euros and more on the net, and The Undermine Journal lists it as never seen on Moonglade EU Horde's AH yet.  Well, that is going to change... as I cracked open a second one to boot!

That's 100 euros in loot worth in both boxes combined, and I'll be listing the second Kite one of the days on the AH for a sick amount of gold that will carry me through grinds a LONG time.  Gold maker tables list this pet at a worth of 100k to 150k gold pieces, so that is going to be the asking price... as no-one has one to list it seems anyways...

But the parcel got even better, as the seller also included... 3 WoW TCG playmats with my order for free!  I love stores trying to liquidate their old stocks before the card game goes completely into obscurity as tournament support ends.

The rare Betrayal of the Guardian epic playmat, not even for sale on MCM, as well as the Crown of the Heavens and Forgotten Tombs mats, worth around 5 - 10 euro each, that is a pretty darn freebie if you ask me!

Conclusion: this gamble definitly paid off, and if all those cards can help further both mine of Smurfs collection, so much the better, but I'm going to gamble of this sort again in a few weeks!

The Plan - Week 2

Time for the second instalment of what I want to do for the comming week in World of Warcraft, random thoughts, and an upcomming laughing barrage by the girlfriend about `your addicted`, `your crazy` and `uhuh`.

But first, let`s have a look back at what I wanted to achieve during the past week, and what worked and what didn`t....

The first big point I wanted to reach, was to get ilvl up from 475 to 480, which I did by getting the epic robes from the Golden Lotus faction and some minor gear upgrading on the 500+ epics I possessed, as well as the staff dropping from Heroic Scholomance.  However, it turns out there have been major Warlock changes and my DPS had some serious hiccups.  Talent resorting and rotational changes compared to years ago has seem to put it back in line, but I need to up the Haste a LOT, from the measly around 2000 currently to at least the cap of 9778, preferably even to the maximum cap of 13737.  I`m going to be looking around for enchantments on the AH for this, to put on those 500+ items as they won`t be replaced to soonish due to epic heroics drops.

The second thing I wanted to get was the 45 Exalted reputations, and this was done!  Bar the easily achieved and planned Tranquilien and Therazane factions, I also hit Exalted with the Lorewalkers, resulting in this very cool mount becoming available, the Red Cloud disc which I promptly bought and am currently using.

The third one, the `...of the Klaxxi` title and achievement wasn`t reached though, as I`ve been neglecting the bug people a little, for the final two paragons I first need to get them 7000 or so extra reputation to hit Revered, only then do those two and their quest lines become available.

General

So what do I want to get this week?  Well, first of all there is the fact my GF has a late shift tomorrow, so I think I`m going to hit LFR for the first time, and see where it goes and where it ends, just to get an idea of the whole thing.

Secondly, I`m aiming for the Tillers to get to Exalted, being currently well over halfway in Revered, that also unlocks three more mounts if I can get them done, the various Riding Goats.

I don`t really have any other `big plans` set up for the week that comes, as I`ll mainly be focussing on...

Achievements

Following the Tillers to Exalted, I`m also going to put in extra effort to get the `Skills that Pay the Bills` meta achievement, which consists of maxing out Fishing, Cooking, Archeology and First Aid.  Three of them are already done, but the cooking is rather hard with the Pandarian Masters, so I`ll be focussing on grinding the needed meats and plant the needed seeds to get some of them hopefully to the maximum level, then over the coming weeks work my way down the list.

Mounts

Well, apart from the Tillers, I continue to do daily runs when I can for the Raven Lord and the Blue Proto Drake.  Why not for the Hawkstrider of Magister`s Terrace?  because it finally dropped the past week, literally after years of effort!

Another mount I am going to try and get, and here comes the part the GF is going to have fun of me in my expense, is the Swift Lovestrider of the Love is in the Air World Event.  I slacked on the event, only realising you could buy the bird instead of having it drop in the short instance daily, and needs 270 Love Tokens.  I have 241 at the moment, and the event ends tomorrow at 10.  I need to leave to my reschooling at 8.00, with 45 minutes of preparation.  So IF I get up at 6.30 instead of 7 and do the four bracelets (takes about 15 minutes) with the daily bon bon / perfume thing... I would be at 266, so I NEED to find a dungeon party to have it drop 4 tokens (it minimises at 6 I believe) AND get to the vendor before 7.30 to grab the mount at the very last moment.

It can be done... she will be laughing at me... but otherwise I have to wait 11.5 MONTHS before I can get it again.

Gold Making

Okay, the Cogwheels didn`t work.  But I did discover another steady, if a tat unreliable source of income outside quests and grinds.  Pets.  Engineering Pets.  They have some very high profit margins, especially the Yeti, but this is due to the lack of Cured Rugged Hide on the AH, no-one needs that for tier armour anymore as in the vanilla days, and the Yeti is basically the only remaining recipy still using it.
The smallest of the pets, the squirrel, has a low PPC, but a decent RRP of around 50 gold, so with some alts doing Prospecting and copper mining for me when I get a few free moments, I hope that this can get my gold levels up to more acceptable levels and allow me to buy all that needed Living Steel.

Though the prices are dropping a very little bit currently for those as we near the expansion end, they still hover around the 500 mark per bar of this daily transmutable metal.  I bid on those that are around 350 and let them run it`s course, but in the end I need more then 60 of them to build both Engineering Mounts as well as both pets for my own use.  In the later expansion, I estimate the market will sink and hope to be able to snatch up more to get some pets extra on the market, but for now it`s buying for own use first.

Alting

Well, here is a dilemma.  Yes the lvl 71 paladin (he dinged on mining and pet battles lol) is providing basic building mats to the engineer and the level 5 prospector at current (the only gems I need to build pets right now are Malachites), but with the sheer amount of possible gold a day through dailies and questing, I can`t see the effort to level up the level 8 alchemist at last and get her to Transmute Living Steel level to pay of in a gold / hour ratio.  I`m going to have a look into these, the jewelcrafter should be levelled though for the mounts, but this would take a LONG time both in levels and professions, so I think I`ll be holding her back one more week before taking the plunge in with her until Lÿntaria has upped some more reputations.
And ironically enough, I realy should be levelling the Hunter / Leatherworker to the point he can produce Cured Rugged Hides, so that definitly on the plan the upcoming week.  He`ll need to hit Leatherworking 250 for this, though the easy part is to provide the mats as both the paladin as himself can be getting them to get there, then I just need to be able to bump him up.

Big plans for the week, and I`ll consider it a success when:

* I have the Tiller Mounts
* The Skills that Pay the Bills achievement
* The Hunter alt is at Leatherworking 250 and can make Cured Rugged Hide

Until next week, when we`ll see if I could hit those marks!

AoM Tower phase 2: Shalakazaaam

The second phase of the Tower `tree` of the Age of Mitgardia project, I have been expanding from a small cave on a hill to a wooden tower on that same hill.

The grass on the rocks has been trimmed and cleaned, and a pole supported tower has arisen on the spot where the cave stood.  For phase three, this has to become a stone tower, but as I`m already `twisting` the concept a little, I think - once I have enough bley and grey bricks - to build up on the mountain to make it a cliffside on one end, and then build a stone tower expanding from the rock side and the wooden tower, to flow into one big wooden / stone hybrid tower.

I just have to go and figure out how exactly to do it though, so it`s about time I`m visiting the PaB wall again...

"New Cloth" Seiya Omega announced

With the Omega season running to an end, BanDai has announced this very, very awesomely looking new Myth cloth model.

Sagitarrius no Seiya, the legendary saint from the original series (and way cooler Pegasus then Koga...) in his new Gold Cloth from awakening his `Omega`.

A very nice looking model, this one is definitly going on my to watch out for list!

LEGO Ghostbusters and Benny... Nostalgia galore

It are good days to be an AFOL these days, as these gems have been shared with the public during the recent Toy Fairs.

First and foremost for me, there is the excellent CUSOO set of the Ghostbusters ECTO-1, complete with the 4 scientists!  It is apparently going to cost around 50 USD, so I now what I`ll be asking for my birthday the beginning of July, as this set is scheduled for release beginning of June.

Second, this set is pure nostalgia.  From The Lego Movie comes `1980s something spaceguy` Benny and his fantastic looking spaceship.  In pure backwards style, it is featured in the old blue and grey color scheme of the original Space range (I was like 7 or so when it came out originally) and with all the typical shennanigans of those days, like detachable auxiliary crafts and the likes.

I`m not planning on buying this one, as it isn`t my Lego niche, but it sure did put a smile on my face.  And rumour has it, october will see a Lego set of Smaug ;-) . 

Now only to wait a week more and then the Movie is finally released overhere!

CGI Movie Deathmask

The spoiler images for the CGI Saint Seiya movie keep spilling out slow and steady over the internet, and so far the Gold Saints have caused `some` debate...

Aiolia and Aldebaran are plain rubbish, Shura was okay for me, and Camus was excellent... where it not for a vase shaped shoulder canon (enter Blastoise reference jokes here).  Today, they released a new image; Cancer Detahmask

As a Cancer myself, this is perhaps the one I waited for in the most anticipation, and I`m glad he didn`t turn out to bad at all.

My only grief is the fact the two pinned arm plates are not symmetrical, but the whole yakuza style of the tattoo and soul patch are alright in my book, we are 25 years ahead of the original images after all, and 25 years ago, tattoos weren`t as common either as today.

The Plan - Week 1

Now that Lÿntaria is 'settled' in her instance completion achievements, and has all the basics done to survive on Pandaria, it is time to start planning 'other things', both important and less important bar to myself.

For that, I'm going to start a new series, with every week some planning of what I hope to achieve in the comming 6 - 7 days; posting a new episode anytime between sunday night and monday morning.

General

First things first, complete the last story arc in Dread Marshes to get the Loremaster achievement, and free all the paragons for the 'of the Klaxxi' title.  This should also net me some gold pieces to be spend later, but more of that in one of the following points of the plan.
The second objective is to get the item level from 475 to 480 this week, first and foremost by upgrading my Robes with the epic one sold by The Golden Lotus.  This means I'll nead 2250 Justice Points, so while questing in the Dead Marshes I'll be queing for Heroics and scenarios to grab those points and so the chest piece.

Achievements

One achievement I'm going to aim for is the 45 reputations to Exalted one.  Currently I'm at 42, but I still need to quickly finish up the Tranquilien one in the Blood Elf start area, and I guess I'll be spending time in Deepholme as of all the Cataclysm factions, Therazane is over halfway Revered.  For a possible third, this will depend a little on what I can get going, the Sunreavers are high on the list, or maybe I'll see if Ogri'La is viable.  Though with 'transmog runs' it might happen one of the older Raid factions will pop first...
The Embersilk will be kindly donated to the First Aid levelling ;-)

Mounts

My Holy Grail.  The plan this week is to keep running daily heroics of Magister's Terrace, Setthek Halls and Utgarde Pinnacle in the vain hope that one of those three mounts (respectively the White Hawkstrider, the Raven Lord and the Blue Proto-Drake) drop, though with my luck this seems rather unlikely.

If I can group a few times to enter older raids, The Huntsman in Kharazan is also on the list, as is milling through Ahn Quiraj for the red rare drop of the bug mount...
Most other mounts the coming weeks will have to come through reputation grinds and daily quests, but like The Tillers with their 3 mounts or the Cloud Serpents aren't high yet on my priority list, nor is the Lovestrider of the current worldevent, as I can't free up enough time to get those 240 tokens the coming 6 days.  I can't remember if they vanish after the event, but I'm just stocking them up in the bank right now...
Of course I'll be saving  up on all the Netherweave that drops, because...

Gold Making

... I'll need a lot of gold to get my hands on the needed Living Steel bars for creating my engineering mounts and pets.  The Netherweave bag, years after the release of The Burning Crusade, is still a sure seller on the auction house (and I'll need them for my alts in due time as well), averaging around 25 gold a bag on buy out on Moonglade.  Not the biggest of sums, but as you get stacks and stacks running through the two instances, and the threads cost near nothing, it's an easy source of income.
I don't bother auctioning the greens; they rarely sell in this era of Heirlooms, and ,y 'planned' enchanter alt still has to get out of her start area anyways so she is far from disenchanting all that material.

Alting

I really need to get going on them, I really do.  Most still hover around the start level between levels 1 and 5, and I need them to start optimizing a decent 'return profit' on all professions.  This week though, my only goal is to have my seriously neglected Paladin of level 70 finally ready to start mining Outlands, levelling up the battle pets on the go.

So that's the big plan for 'week 1' in WoW'ing series, I have no idea if I'll succeed, BUT I do have a serious idea that there is a LOT I need to catch up for from entering again so late in the expansion.  At least that prevents me from being bored hehehe...

Transmogrified Delusions

I admit, I was completely in the blue on this whole Transmogrification issue.  When it came out, I wasn't playing anymore, and when I returned to playing I didn't pay attention to that.

But then I saw more and more 'transmogrification item runs' starting to pop up, whole set guides and I started to be picked in curiosity, yet didn't follow up on it yet.

Until two days ago, whhen I was doing my once more run through Heroic Magister's for that lovely White Hawkstrider, the Blood Elf staff from Kael'Thas, the Rod of Blazing Light, dropped.

This is an awesome looking staff for a Blood Elf magic user, and I went to see the transmogger in Vale of the Eternal Blossoms.

I admit, at first I had some misconceptions about the whole process, questions I didn't find direct answers to.

* Did it keep it's original stats (of the lower level item) but upgraded to the current level item, or did it keep the current item's stats?

* Was the lower level item destroyed, meaning if you got new equipment you had to chunk through the instances again till a fresh one drops?

I was deluded on those parts as I took the plunge by mogging my Staff of Trembling Will into the Rod of Blazing Light.

Sure, you 'loose' the visuals of the item you mogged, but as you are changing it's appearance, it means you didn't like it that much after all (though it wasn't really ugly, the blood elf one just is prettier and more in character).

So yes, those where 43 gold pieces well spend, and they picked my intrest.  Since the original item hasn't been destroyed but now in my bank (Blizzard, make work of that 'toybox slot' for the bank, I'm drowning at the moment in fun items and lvl1 Holiday gear for role playing), I'm going to have to see to a way to empty a bit of clutter (maybe focus on Ahn'Qiraj and finally start turning in all those scarabs for ... I don't even remember what they where for anymore, or all those apexis shards for the Ogri'La ogres).  I won't ever delete those old vanilla relics I needed to craft in order to get my warlock mount back then though... nostalgia you see.

Heck, even in a videogame, it seems you can get emotionally attached to clutter...

That way, I can maybe empty up a bag and start keeping transmog gear for later updates in the game, as I am at the doorstep of doing raids and as such will probably get a lot of gear upgrades still, only to have them mogged again. 

Now to go do research if there is any set or way to get Lÿntaria a gear set of those typical red wizard robes...

Ciao ciao!

SCORE: EX-003 Dragon Shiryu Promo card

Well, life of a collector is a bit like Varys in A Game of Thrones.  Your little birds whisper sweet melodies in your ears, and then it is up to you to deduct the right chores from them...

And so my search in completing the very hard to find promo cards of the english Knights of the Zodiac promo cards let me to a small comic store in Texas.  Which is quite a bit of sifting through melodies, as that is over the Atlantic.

They had a set of three of the large BanDai action figures, priced 47 USD for the lot, and containing Shiryu, Hyoga and Ikki, but most importantly (of course, I forgot to mention this doing the inquiries), the picture had shown me that Shiryu was a 'first edition', coming with the limited edition card.

So of course they where bought, and arrived yesterday at my doorstep.  The action figures are rather cool as well, coming with a version of their cloth as well, but most importantly, that is one less card on my wanted list, slow but steady I'm getting there!

Yes, and I know it is Valentine's Day, I'm off to the restaurant in 5 minutes, so just to stay a bit in the mood, a little bit of romance as well, in theme ;-) and dedicated to the GF.

Inspirational Lego - Think Big

Weekend is coming, something the original author of that more or less accurate quoting couldn't say anymore.  Did you see the 15 minute preview of the new Game of Thrones season?  I can barely wait until the beginning of april when it kicks off aagain, and even though we all know what will happen to Oberyn Martell, he does look like an intresting character...

But I disgress, this post is about inspiring Lego models of a large scale.  I'm putting down all the great works I came across the past few weeks in a single post, because the weekend is going to be all about computers, computers and more computers.  Tomorrow I'll be helping with all the cabling to be done to bring my machine over to the GF's place, and yesterday Chu decided to (finally) replace her aging lap top with a new one so that'll mean pc shopping this afternoon.  The old 1GB Acer with it's XP service pack 2 has ran it's course (though he'll probably move to the munchkin for his homework), and she is going to get a fresh 'third generation' one.

Which means this one has to be emptied and sorted, so that includes a lot of pictures I snatched on the webs 'to do a post about' one day...

So today: big Lego builds, and then I literally mean builds of the 'barely fits on the dinner table' variety.

 The Battleship Yamato, not the space version I showed earlier, but the real deal

 This Hogwarts Castle is a 'bit' bigger then the boxed set edition, and is from the same buildster as the Rivendell I showed here a few weeks ago.

 My father always wanted a Volvo again, I always want more bricks... maybe an opportune moment to create a coloboration?

 Just for the munchkin ;-)

On a different note, remember the Brickmania report back in november with the big 'team build display' of the Pirates?  Well, this year the team is going to go medieval, and one of the also on Eurobricks active members has dropped me a PM to ask if I could join in the fun!

Of course!  To have some build or two included in such a large magazine and television covered layout is about all an amateur builder like me can dream off, and it gives a very rewarding personal feel inside that after barely a few months that I seriously started building and moc'ing again, they have confidence the level is already good enough to participate... though I probably won't be able to be in attendance the whole faire, as the 'Cool Uncle' has his expedition to do with all the kids, I can make certain the models get there on time and get collected on time afterwards, my parents live close to the venue.

Roight, time for me to do some more research on the price / quality ratio of HP or Acer laptops, until the next time!