Sundries

I’ve been spending time recently in WOW trying to get control of my storage space.  I’ve been playing for about 4 years now and even though I’m filled up with all 20 slot bags on my character (except for the lame backpack of course since you can’t change it) and in all the bank slots but I’m still having trouble storing all my gear.

I’ve also recently given up mining on my main character Ogiue and she is now doing only Enchanting and Tailoring.  The problem is that both of these professions require me to store a large amount of material to do them.   Aside from making good money the collecting professions such as mining, skinning, and herbalism make it very easy to just send everything to a bank alt to sell.  I’ve done that with my enchanting and tailoring items as well but once again ran out of bank space on that character as well.

I found a great solution though, I’ve created my own guild for my bank alt and purchased 4 bank slots for him.  I’m now the guild leader on two separate guilds, each called Genshiken, on two different servers.  The first Genshiken guild isn’t really active at all and the new Genshiken guild is just my bank alt.  Now I mostly keep all my soulbound items and my cooking items on my main character and store most everything else on my bank alt.  I’ve got more than enough space to keep everything and just need to use the in game mail to move items back and forth.  It’s still a minor pain to do that.

I really wish Blizzard would come up with some type of extra storage area for all the soulbound items you don’t wish to destroy.  I must have about 50 pieces of holiday items that I just can’t bring myself to destroy just to free up some space.  A good example is the Winter Veil (Christmas) holly which transforms your mount into Rudolf the Red Nosed Reindeer.  I had taken a break from WOW last Christmas so the ones I had were from almost 2 years ago:

It was fun pulling this out and running around Dalaran or flying around Northrend on my own Reindeer.  I’m glad I didn’t destroy these a long time ago to save up space.

I also did the small little Day of the Dead holiday recently in WOW.  I haven’t logged in yet to see if the little mariachi pet is still there or not but he was cute.  He didn’t get added to the regular pet inventory so I’m guessing he’s only temporary:

I’ve recently been starting to feel a little burnt out on the game, I think it’s because I’ve just taken up and leveled Tailoring which cost a huge amount of money and time.  I’ve been cutting back on wow as my interests in Photography have come up again so I may just take WOW easy for a week or two so i don’t get to the point where I just cancel my account again.  I’m really looking forward to the coming holidays in the game and don’t want to feel like I’m being burdened to log in to complete them.

**James.

With all the holidays in WOW I’ve been keeping busy lately.  We are still in the middle of Hollow’s End now and I’ve completed everything I need or wanted except for getting the Headless Horseman’s Reins. I got to each a bunch of candy and throw up:

I also managed to complete the last of my Dalaran cooking quests and got the final piece, my chefs hat and title:

It’s a silly looking hat, one of the reasons I love it, but it was a pain to collect the 100 cooking awards to get it.  It’s only real use, aside from being a vanity item, is that it makes you cook faster.  I’m guessing it’s at least twice or three times as fast.  It’s pretty amazing but it’s not often that I need to cook up enough items where it’s worth taking out and equipping the hat to save time.

I did get to see the Headless Horseman’s Reins drop once while grouping with some guildies, two of them even had the mount already so didn’t need it.  That gave me a 33.3% chance to get the mount but I lost it.   (sniff):

It’s not that I need another mount, I think I have 63 mounts now.  I’ve been keeping myself busy getting my argent tournament mounts and also decided to drop mining and pick up tailoring finally:

I’ve also been keeping myself very busy doing battlegrounds whenever I can.  To be more specific I’m doing Wintergrasp all the time.  I’ve managed to put together a complete PVP set of gear (all purples) from the tokens and honor points in about two or three weeks.  I also was able to buy my first Mammouth mount with the Stone Keeper’s Shards:

It’s strange how I’ve never been a fan of PVP before.  In fact, I’ve always hated it.  There is just something different about Wintergrasp though, I really enjoy it.  Sure, I die from time to time but I’ve found I’m actually a pretty good PVP’er in WG.  I don’t go one on one with people, I do what people should do and stay with groups.  I try to add as much DPS to each target as I can and when the time calls for it use the mage’s great AOE abilities when called for.  I don’t have the best DPS in the raid but I’m almost always in the top 3 of damage done, here are some of my damage readouts after WG:

You can click them to make them larger.  I’ve blurred out the other names as I’m not trying to say they weren’t doing their part but just that I’m feeling good about the amount of damage I’m adding to the battle.

When I was out at the Argent Tournament grounds I saw that Jaina Proudmoore was there with some others doing a scripted NPC thing.  I haven’t seen her since I did the faction change to horde but I don’t remember her being a giant?

Sure, as Undead my posture isn’t as good as it used to be but still!!!  She must be about 10 feet tall!!!

I’ve also started dusting off Konata, my L70 hunter.  I’ve done her talent spec and got her setup to go out and start leveling when I’m ready for her.  I’ve even went out and got a new pet for leveling, a good old tanking bear.

I felt bad about putting PeterFile in the stables but I’ve really heard that Gorillas aren’t the tanking pet there were when I last played my hunter.  I remember PeterFile could take 4 or 5 L70 mobs on at a time with not much trouble and I’d just AOE them down.  I guess I’ll take some time out and see how my new bear works out.  I’ve named him Fumoffu after the bear mascot from the anime Full Metal Panic – Fumoffu:

Ok, yes.  he’s not a polar bear but I couldn’t find a name for a polar bear that I’d like.  Snuggles?  sounds too easy.  I think I’ll try him out and see how I like him.  The only problem is that he’s only L65 now and I’d really like a L70 pet when I head to Northrend so I may just drop him and get a pet from there.  Maybe a rhino?

**James.

I’ve had a huge stroke of luck recently and managed to fish myself up a new mount.  Yes, I said “fish” up.  There is a very rare mount you can fish up in Northrend which is a sea turtle:

As you can see above, I got the “Turtles All the Way Down” achievement for this.  What I really loved was the huge wall of green guild text giving me “grats” from my guild mates.

This is a very rare mount but what made it even more unusual is how I caught it.  I was looking through my achievements and realized that I had a few more in fishing to do and thought I’d check out how “rare” the turtle mount is.

I found a nice safe spot in Bourean Tundra to land and then went to the web to try to find out just how rare it was.   I didn’t have much luck on finding any percentages but deiced I should just start finishing in any Northrend fishing pools I spot till I get lucky.  I’d at least catch some good fish to use or sell.

I got back into the game and in about 20 seconds I found my first pool.  Got my fishing rod out and then, believe it or not – on my first cast, DING – I got the turtle mount.  I was almost in shock.   I thought I may be confused at first since I had just been reading about it but nope, I got it.

What’s funny is that he’s only a 60% speed increase mount in water.  While that’s damn slow on land it feels like he just flys in the water.  I also had my Mastercraft Kalu’ak Fishing Pole from my Kalu’ak reputation grind on my so I could breath underwater and ride.

I also managed to do all the Brewfest holiday things I wanted and got my new title of Brewmaster:

I’ve done the L80 party to kill Coren Direbrew about 5 or 6 times but haven’t even seen his mount drop.   I’ve received the Mithril Pocketwatch and the Bubbling Brightbrew Charm but that’s it.  The only thing I wanted but haven’t received yet is Direbrew’s Remote.

I did have great time spent grouping with my guild and thanks to some new gear and PVP gear rewards from doing WinterGrasp I’ve seen my DPS go from 1400 up to about 2200 now.    I’ve only recently discovered how fun WinterGrasp is so I’m working on getting some PVP gear.

**James.

Around noon on Saturday I was able to join the Creamy Orange Otter Pop group in AIE and go say hello to the leaders of the four major Alliance cities.  Oh, I got a Black War Bear for it as well:

This was the first raid on an enemy city I’ve gone on and it was great fun.  Some of our group managed to sneak into Iron Forge and go into one of the small 2nd floor apartments and summon the entire raid into one of the small little rooms near the main Forge.

The shot above was before it got too crowded.  This was also Pirate Day which explains why so many people are looking like pirates.   We quickly took out the rest of the cities leaders – First was Iron Forge then took the tram to Storm Wind, made our way to the docks to hit Darnassus and then on to Exodar to finish it off:

After we finished it was on to Dalaran to show off our new Black War Bear mounts and rub it into the face of the Aliance:

This was great fun and only took about an hour to get completed.  It’s so much better when you are in such a large guild as AIE and have so many people wanting to help each other get their mounts and have fun.

**James.

After my previous post this morning I was looking at how close I was to getting my rep to exalted with Sha’tari Skyguard and didn’t realize how close I was.  I just decided to start killing mobs for 11 XP each and after a short time of doing that as well as doing 2 turn-ins of Shadow Dust I got to exalted:

Too bad that everything except the mounts are useless to me at L80 now but I did get all the mounts putting my total at 56 mounts so far:

I’m flying a big ugly space slug!!! 

**James.