Raid Ready

Okay, I did the goal I wanted to achieve today, and get over that 460 item level requirement in order to be able to start using raid finder and the likes.

After shopping new pants with the Klaxxi I was at 459, then a dropped staff from the Sha of Doubt on Heroic Jade Temple took me to the limit and to 461, and finally I spend those Valor points I`ve been hoarding the past weeks to buy Battle Tags at the Shado-Pan Assault on the Isle of Thunder, now putting me at the 466 mark.

The plans for the comming time as such are to get Engineering to that 600 mark (about 20 to go), and slowly build up for more raids, as currently the only one available is the Mogu`Shan Vaults first part.


Further time will be spend rounding out the Dread Wastes questlines, do the Isle of Thunder and then off to the Timeless Isle, as once the Engineering is capped I can start building up a gold reserve, something that didn`t go that well during the expansion as I had to buy most of the materials for the profession.

Inspirational Lego - from the MocPages

I was spending time in the classroom this morning surfing MOCpages.com being an avid student that worked so fast I had some free time, and went to have a look at that site to maybe start up an account there.

Touring it, I must say I found a lot of very great inspirational models, and I only been on the pages trolling for like 15 minutes so far...  the name in bald is how it is to be entered in the MOCpages search engine to have more detailed looks of the models, it's definitly worth it!

This Druid Meeting is quite exceptional, and like the builder, the tree is kust sheer awesomeness

The Galilego Observatory even has a real working kaleidoscope build into it.

HP Lovecraft's study is full of small references to his famous works

Pure awesome is this large Battleship Yamato from the anime spaceship

But so is the Battlestar Galactica

Some tongue in cheeck, as Scorpion does a Mortal Kombat Brickality on to poor Liu Kang

Of course, I just had to search Warcraft on the site, and two of the nicest things I found for my query was this large Female Gnome, and the Griffon.

Finally, there is this 9th Doctor (by old counting :-) ) TARDIS control room...

I know what I'll be doing the somewhere this week (like, apart from installing all the cableing for the pc move at last!!!) outside WoW, and that is making an account for myself there and upload some of my own creations.  There are a lot of awesome things on it; but Lego is for all ages and all people, and I'm not ashamed to show whatever I brick together.

Cheerios!

Smoke & Mirrors

It has been to long, but finally Telltale Games allows you to once again step into the shoes of Bigby Wolf and continue your investigations into the murder of the Fable "Faith" (the Girl with the Muleskin), a prostitute looking for a way out.

We left of in episode one with the head of Snow White on your doorstep, and you'll be in for some shocks during this episode.  The game is build on the same engine as The Walking Dead, but is harsher and rawer then the survival and moral choices of TWD.  The Wolf Amongst Us is more a film noir genre of detective, and even though we get a clue in the final moments of this second episode... it has not been said that is the actual direction the story is going to go into.

I bet the picture you saw is about a psychopath, but driven by lust, while the killer probably came in after the now main suspect left...

The game does follow the raw style of the comics, and you even get actual naked titties in this one, as The Little Mermaid is doing an auditioning dance in the Pudding and Pie stripclub.  Who said fairy tale figures made millions on the royalties of their stories?

I actually enjoy this game more then The Walking Dead, probably the more harsh and 'down trodden' tone it has to it, and I can only eagerly await the next episodes of both games to be released, as well as The Game Of Thrones they are working on!

If you downloaded this episode, make sure to get patch 1.01 for it asap as well, it's only 15mb but apparently there was a small bug as the gale kept freezing up until I downloaded the file!

A new project... and my first Guild of Historica title

Success!

Today I received notice from the Eurobricks forum that my Storehouse 3 phase prject has made the jury's pass and I can now add the 'Manager' title to my signature over on that adult LEGO MoC forum!

Pretty cool, but now I'm going to have to think about which one I'll be going to be expanding over next.  With a current sub 'competition' running involving the three military subjects for the title of Hersig (one each in Archery, Barracks and Stables), at first I was tempted to build further along those lines, but I think I'll rather start expanding two or three of the already started parts to Phase 2 first.  My 'shortlist' is in the first place the Tower (and start expanding on that Wizard Tower path I began), the House (which will go further in it's Dance Maccabre idea) or the Store which will be a waterbased market... decisions decisions.


But I have a bigger project to try and complete first!

As said before with the inspiring Mega-Bloks mini set of a Blood Elf priest, I'm going to build something along those lines as seen in World of Warcraft, one of those typical Sin'dorei buildings that dot the Eversong Woods landscape.  And perhaps build one of those Arcane Guardians based on a Bionicle model... 

But at least I already scrounged together the parts for the characters in the scene...

The hardest part for this though will be on the how to create decent round towers, I've been reading a lot of building guides, but it seems it won't be something easy to do, especially to add a domed roof to it all afterwards.  Ideas a plenty in my mental mayonaise so far, but I guess a lot will hinge on the fact of what I can really achieve.

With the Guilds of Historica book II now moving into the second 'country', which apparently will be Avalonia, land of knights, fairy tales and unicorns, I'll be spending time on that build as well.  

My first idea is to finally crack open those Chima sets I've been gathering 'on the cheap' with the Bargain buys of the last weeks (January in Belgium is typically a month where stores try and liquidate out of fashion items, and the fox set of Chima being of the older sets was found for a measly 8 euros in the local toy shop amongst other older sets) and build something around that...

Here is a hint on what I'm going to try and do, or at least the 'philosophy' behind it...



Well, a lot of bricky thingy stuffsies in the pipeline, and it seems it's time to go back to the local LEGO store one of these weeks with my Pick a Brick freebie box and a cup or two to grab more green and brown bricks... because I will be building a lot of trees it seems!

Ciao Ciao

Only 5 more... points...

Today was my last chance to gain some item level points in Warcraft until next tuesday, so I decided to make the best of it this afternoon once I got through doing 'all that other stuff I needed to do first', and it was a success I must say.

Starting out in my push to be Raid ready, I logged in with an item level of 440, and logged out at 455, meaning I only need to do 5 more points of gear and be ready for the 'normal' level of Raiding in the lowest raid available, which requires ilvl 460.

I decided to really focus, so bar farming my crops for cooking and planting fresh ones, I didn't got side tracked in doing dailies for The Tillers, The Anglers and The Order of The Cloud Serpent, but instead grinded through 6 Heroic dungeons and a guild run Heroic scenario, netting some achievements along the way and bumping perhaps the only side track I allow myself for now, being the getting to exalted for the Horde pandaren faction to grab all those mounts.

Oh, and get one pet levelled in the fight against a tamer, as I was waiting for my HS to cooldown after dropping off some stuff over at the Darkmoon Fair to complete a quest.

I now did some reseach on the potential candidates to be replaced by epics, bought with Justice and Valor points, and it seems the Klaxxi (where I already bought an epic belt now), Golden Lotus and August Celestials are high on the priority list as the 'next reputation to grind', especially the Lotus to Honored for all their Tailoring patterns available, and then the Celestials for the epic 28 bag tailoring pattern.  I have enough Imperial Silk crafted up already now to at least make two for Lÿn.  And one can never have enough bag space after all!

But I estimate about 2500 extra Justice Points should do the trick now to get to that 460, probably the first buy I'll do tuesday will already be getting me there as I'll be replacing a 429 item then with a 489 level.

Of course, there is always that little linger in the back of my head to grab mounts, mounts and more mounts, and to that end I have been reading about 'goldmakers' on the internet, and how to's on cornering markets on the auction house.

I think I'm going to try and do it with the most niche of markets

Yes, Cogwheel gear enhancers.  It works the same as Gems, but they can be added to most gear as slots.  It's a rather 'odd' market, I know, but at the moment the server has a full THREE auctions running, two which are mine, byproducts of some modest levelling earlier today.  The bad news though is that I really, really should level up a character to be at least able to smelt the Ghost Iron Ore, preferably even mine it, but I'm not really in the 'mindset' to grind all the way up just yet.

So another otpion I have: I still have 2 extra double loot cards of Landro's Little XT from Worldbreaker, so I just might as well scratch those and turn them in, then list the BoE pets you get for them.  Looking at sites like The Undermine, these should yield on Moonglade anywhere between 35000 to 66000 gold pieces, so I'm going for the average of around 50k, that should (except the Grand Expedition Yak) be enough to cover the expenses for buying Ghost Iron bars until my miner 'gets there' (I'm really not dropping Tailoring!) and the occasional faction related mounts that will be starting to come available as the reputation grinds proceed.

Another 'idea' I had was to start building Mounts, but unfortunatly things like the Engineer's motorcycle are bloody expensive, and I still have to do reseach on the fact if it is worth it to build the vanity pets they can create.  But as said, that is for the far future, after Lÿn is well geared up for end game content and probably in those last dying weeks before the new expansion arrives to build up the gold reserves...

Ready for Heroics

A good day of grinding today as I could clock some decent game time!


With the item level now having broken the needed 435 for being allowed to do Heroic dungeons (standing at 440 at the moment), I can go and start working up myself for the Raiding.  The first barrier to be taken is 460, so that should be do-able by the time I fully completed the Steppes and the Marshes, together with dailies grind for the cloud serpent.

I also tried my hand at the scenarios today, mini instances that are a bit like the old `group quests` in vanilla, but instanced in a small area and with a storyline (of sorts), those where quit fun to do and don`t take to long, so I`ll probably be plunging in those some more (and work out where I can spend my Valor points).  I think I`ll be randoming heroics and regular dungeons and scenarios the comming on / off weeks of my gametime, at least until the computer has moved to the GF and I can put in some decent game-a-thon`s while she works her shifts...

Then after that, it will be time to check out that infamous Timeless Isle...

Born of the Gods and the SuperBowl!!!

What a weekend this was followers!

The whole weekend there was the Born of the Gods prerelease events running in the local watering hole, to celebrate the launch of the most recent expansion for the Theros block!

And it was the SuperBowl, highlight of the american football season, in which the Seattle Seahawks trashed the Denver Broncos!

I saw neither :-(


A lot of different reasons, both fun and less fun, but the bottom line is I haven't seen ziclh bar some day after coverage on the net.

Oh well, the next thing I got my eye on is the Antwerp Convention at the end of april (okay, and an adult fair in a few weeks of which I am NOT providing picture material or a report, you pervs!) and I can only hope my beloved's fancy for 'butterfly winged elfin creatures'  results in something like this:

Raawwrrr

Pandaria - the first impressions

So I logged in about a week of actual game time sessions nowadays into the new expansion (that is already ending) and I must say, even though not as good as The Wrath of the Lich King, which for me was the top expansion soaked with lore, it has been a sweet trip so far.

In this post, I'm going to have a look at the 4 areas I completely cleared so far, as well as the two instances I dropped in as of yet.

Still in the progress now of trying to gear up to help the guild with flexi raiding, I've been doing enough so far to at least get to Scenario allowed level, next step will be to raise my equipment level of 426 to the needed 435 for Heroic instances, then make the jump to raid level.

I've set for myself the Heroic deadline at the end of february, and the raid level after the week of holidays in march.  If I can log in a few hours a day for a week, this is perfectly feasible for that second part...

BEWARE: Pandaria offers a LOT of sidetracks, especially for a Mount fanatic like myself, as you have factions like The Anglers, The Tillers (with a farming sideline) and The Lorewalkers that focus respectively on Fishing, Cooking and Archeology, and work towards mounts to be gotten...

The Jade Forest

This is your first arrival point at Pandaria, and it starts out with the war that has been renewed between the Horde and the Alliance.  You befriend a local faction (Hozen monkeys for the Horde, Jinyu fishmen for the Alliance) and in the end you have another Exalted reputation on your tab (it takes about 20 story progressing quests) and a vanity pet in the form of a Tiny Goldfish.

Other points of intrest in the Forest is the faction responsible for the flying chinese dragons, but I'm trying as of yet to still steer clear of those, I must level gear first before resuming mount chasing...

The Forest itself is rather irritating though 'pre flying enabled' as it has a lot of height differences in the level, making navigating a rather hard job until you can mount up again and take to the skies (at level 90, for only 2000 gold).

The Valley of the Four Winds

Farmers (and cooks) paradise as Halfhill offers not only the farming game (grow your own cooking ingredients) but also a lot of dailies for the Tillers faction.  As they have 3 mounts for sale at exalted, it is one of the factions I've been doing dailies for so far, though I haven't been championing them yet.  The August Celestial faction so far has my rep bar on Championing (the old tabard system) for the tailoring patterns they provide.

Also of note for tailors here are the Silken Fields, where once a day you can create a sheet of Imperial Silk, that also has a chance to provide an Imperial Silkworm vanity pet, and teaches you new crafting recipies, 458 PvP gear, that you can tailor and sell, or wear to upgrade as I do at the moment.

This area I liked, it's like a big Westfall from the Alliance, but to completely unlock it's story, you'll need to do the next area as well, being

The Kasarang Wilds

Stranglethorn.  Dark jungles, ruined temples... we've seen this before.  And the home of legendary fisherman Nat Pagle and the Anglers faction.  I personally think this a rather intresting faction, as it provides a mount, and a raft (a ship you can sit on to go fish out in the oceans), and you can fish up three dailies to turn in to Nat as well.

For the rest I wasn't to fond of this zone though, it is also the launch point of the War storyline and faction, but I haven't been delving into that so far.  It's on the 'to do' though as I now am eligible for the scenarios and you need to complete one to get on in this storyline, where Vol'Jin and Garrosh come to fighting point... and as we all know now from the youtube end movies of the Siege of Ogrimmar expansion, Vol'jin is becomming the new Horde leader with Thrall's blessing.

Kun-Lai Summit

Next we travelled to Mount (N)Everest and the wow version of Nepal, including a race of small creatures that behave in sherpa like fashion.  It's a zone full of heavy phasing (you can't make the archeological digs in the mountains, even though they show on your minimap, before the story is completed with the shado-pan) and a lot of escort missions as you phase between sherpa (I mean, Grummie) camps.

It's long, it was rather dull, though the small Zandalari arc was okay, and bar the Grummie yaks not really something to focus on yet.  I'll have to come back here later though as the White Tiger temple is located here.


So far the zoning, but yesterday I also managed to do my first two (well, 3 actually) 'basic' instances after returning from a darts tournament.  It had been 20 years since I threw an arrow, but me and my dual partner managed to push through to the quarter finals, my personal performance track ending a positive 5 wins out of 9 single matches.  And it was one side of the metal bar difference or we would have made the semis... not to shabby!

But never the less, I managed to join two instances.  The odd thing is, even with all 90s I came out second in the DPS meters on all three instances, while I was having a feel I didn't do that much damage at all.  Clearly it seems my new rotation is more or less in the right direction though.

The Temple of the Jade Serpent

The first steps in Pandaria instancing, I noticed you follow the same path as you did in the regular quests, but now it has all phased into an instance.  Fight the fish guy with his water elementals, help out in the library and then save the misguided priestess and serpent drake before battling a big Sha.

It is a pretty instance, but like it turns out with both of them I did for now, also rather short, barely any trash on the way as you jump into 3 rooms and boss bash.

Mogu'Shan Palace

I did this actually twice yesterday with the PuG because it is fast, swift and easy.  Three boss fights, and some minor trash concentrations, nothing to hard and you get through in under half an hour at a casual rate.  And the second time, Xin dropped some new shoes for Lÿntaria, all to kind of him.

Instancing is different now.  It's short and hectic instead of the hours you could spend in them 'in the old days' unless you where seriously over equipped.  This is on the one hand good (for loot chances) but on the other hand perhaps bad (reputation gaining).  My personal jury is still out on that one.

Now I'm going to try and grind my way up the next weeks as said to Heroic instancing levels, and try and focus not to get distracted to much, even though I rue the fact I 'forgot' since Wrath to co-level my 'providers' for the Warlock.  I just deleted them all (they where halfway their 20s or so) and started fresh ones, each with different gathering and crafting skills, to be slowly levelled up in between to get me my much needed ores for engineering, and bump up the gold levels on all the other excess crafting mats.  And do more pet battles all the while...

And resist researching the what to do's for the Darkmoon Faire...

It'l like Pokemon

One of the big changes that have occured in World of Warcraft since I quit and now restarted, si a system of pet battling.  

Yes, it is like Pokemon, you train up your companion pets, and then fight others, both players and NPC's, and it has a series of achievements that are Account bound, not character bound.

There are 10 families of pets, and the level cap for the critters is 25, so slowly, while levelling the 'gathering alts' for my main (to both feed her professions, especially the engineering, as well as her gold amount to feed her mount addiction... and the mounts they can craft themselves for the stables).

So I made a selection 'so far' of my pet collection, and will be levelling them up in batches, first to 5, to 10, etc etc as they accompany the alts.

Elemental: Phoenix Hatchling
My companion I always treasured the most, a drop from Magister Terrace.  It's so Blood Elvishly... and it will be my 'main player'.

Magical: Enchanted Broom
No doubt here what I'd be using, as these brooms are seen everywhere in my native area, keeping Silvermoon clean.

Dragonkin: Spirit of Competition
A gift from the 2008 winter olympics (I have the tabard as well still) this great looking dragon.

Mechanical: Clockwork Gnome
From my most enjoyed profession, this Archeology find is hilarious as it builds turrets.

Undead: Vampiric Batling
Another very rare of my collection, as it was only available a very short time during Halloween pre Wrath of the Lich King.

Aquatic: Strand Crawler
A fishing gain, and it's just cute.  And my zodiac sign...

Flying: Tiny Sporebat
When the Sporregar came out in the Burning Crusade, everyone declared me mad to grind their reputation first.  But I did it and it is a cute little (and it is very small for a companion) beastie.

Humanoid: Grunty
Another old exclusive, this one came when you bought a streamer ticket to Blizzcon 2009.

Critter: Wolpertinger
I got no idea what it actually is, better get another beer...

Beast: Siamese Cat
This is the dearest to me, it was my very first companion, dropping in the Deadmines when I started playing, and you need bank and bagspace to keep your companions with you (but why did I sell of my Hyacinth Macaw back then, stupid idiot that I am)

Now to get those traps ready and throw some Companion Cages around!