Day Thirty - 12 Sept 2010

I managed to take some decent screenshots! I'm certain I can improve, but that I managed these was a small victory.

I participated in Operation Gnomeregan as much as a thirty-something can. I really enjoyed it. It was fun, funny and simple. It was simply enjoyable.

Kallixta Roars!

I roared. I cheered. I did my part.

Kallixta Cheers!

I was energized and dinged level 37 quickly. Fast money and XP was wonderful! I ran around Dustwallow Marsh, completing up a few easy quests, and exploring to completion my first zone in Kalimdor. I also had been accumulating the cards for the Mages Deck. This yielded Darkmoon Pendant which would have been great a week ago, before a satchel dropped a better necklace. Without difficulty, I dinged level 38.

I went to my trainer and felt ready for the SM Cathedral. But just before I selected it, I decided to try a random first. Where did the Random LFD send me? Cathedral!

Another one bites the dust!

I didn't win anything great from the run, except from the satchel itself, with a Monkey's Ring and I immediately equipped. Shifting into a quieter mode, I did some fishing outside Stormgarde Keep in Arathi until my skill was something over 200 and I had sufficient Mithril Head Trout to level my cooking to artisan level as well.

Day Twenty Four - 30 August 2010

I spent some time reconfiguring my addons on the laptop. Something wasn't right and I eventually fixed it, but it meant reloading Threat plates and I lost my prior settings. I'll need to fix that soon.

I flew down to Booty Bay and picked up some recipes for Aldonza, took the boat to Ratchet and headed south. I took the Great Lift down, ran to the Feralas flight path then back through the canyons to the Shimmering Flats. I did a bit of grinding on Turtles, Scorpions and Basilisk before I turned in quests. i was close, but not quite level 33. I headed over the hills to get the Gadgetzan flight path, flew back up to Ratchet, sailed to Booty Bay and by the time I'd turned in those quests, I'd dinged.

I queued for another run in Gnomeregan. Things went well until Emi Shortfuse did her thing. Suddenly  folks started running into the cave and killing the troggs there. I tried calling them back, assuring them they'd come to us, but they ended up abandoning unlooted corpses to escape before Emi brought down the house.

I failed to win Grubbis Paws and then the healer and the warlock left!

We three manned the trash until the dormitory. I washed the grime encrusted ring and a bunch of other grimy things, but we eventually gave up. I left the group to finish the ring quest chain. A couple reagent arrangements and a trip to Ironforge got me a new ring!

Day Twenty Three - 29 August 2010

I've discovered that taking screen shots isn't easy. At first. I just was forgetting. then I discovered that each of my computers uses a slightly different key sequence. I'd need to double check what I was doing, adding a delay and resulting in lousy shots. When I get the desktop stable, I'm sure it'll improve.

So I knew I had some comfortable time today. I could run a random LFD. If I got Stocks, at least it would be quick. I wanted to run any of the others. It gave me the Scarlet Monastery Graveyard. We went straight to the final boss and nothing dropped for me:

I lost the greed roll on the Headguard

So that was nice and fast. The Tumultuous Necklace of the Bear dropped from the satchel of goodies. Just the enchantment I wanted!

With that done, I decided I'd like to select Razerfen Kraul. I had to wait a few minutes, but then we got going. Things were going smoothly. The first three bosses succumbed to our might. Overlord Ramtusk dropped just what I wanted: Tusken Helm!We moved on and were getting close to the next boss when my laptop went dark. It's a strange problem and only rebooting seemed to fix it.I'm sorry I left my group in the lurch like that, but I suppose they got another tank before too long. By this time I was just short of level 31 and I had my interest soured by the cranky laptop, so I took a break.

Later I got set up on the good laptop and got threat-plates and some other addons all set up. It was time to run Gnomeregan. The party was looking for XP and was perfectly happy to hunt down every boss. We shared quests and took off. I felt we did fine. The instance isn't easy to navigate through, but we found Grubbis easily enough and nobody got trapped in the explosions. We got to the room we knew had a boss, but couldn't spot him, "Vicious Fallout" just doesn't look like a boss, but we figured it out when the blue dagger popped up. Time to move on.

I didn't have problems with threat or runners, but I was burning through the mana. I had to drink twice and uses a mana potion twice to keep things going. After the third boss, we knew finding the fourth would be tricky, but one party member volunteered and led us down with some fancy jumping. No one misjumped and we got to the Crowd Pummeler. We knew exactly where to go next. Stopping just short of the final boss, his trash defenders line up in a very different way. These guys didn't look like they were wandering around, but instead were resting until released. One party member thought it looked scary and I agreed. They were rather intimidating, but fell quickly enough. Actually, so did Thermaplug. He dropped his shield and I won that. I also got the grime encrusted ring, but folks left before I could convince anyone to run back to the Sparklematic with me. Oh well, I can use another run.

I turned in my completed quests, including the one that gave me Dual Reinforced Leggings. I like upgrades, but I am not a fan of the metal bikini look. I cry!

The Metal Bikini

I realized two other quests required me to return to the part just outside of the Instance to finish (Techbot's brain and the Phial thing) They were surprisingly easy. Still, I will need to return inside to clean the ring.

I celebrated by running Arathi Basin twice, but Alliance still failed to win! Grumble, grumble.

All those quest turn ins and the PvP gave me the XP boost I needed to ding level 32. It was a busy day.