Crazy Cattle

Hitting the Ramparts

We’ve all been playing in the Burning Crusade since it came out. Last weekend was the first official CC instance run. The original crew tackled the Ramparts of Hellfire Citadel.

We went in without doing any pre-reading. None of us had tried the instance before and we didn’t have any idea what to expect. It was totally different and pretty awesome that we were learning as we went. Overall, we did fine. Except for the darn jerk of a dragon, Nazan. It took us maybe 3 or 5 tries to down him, but in the end we did and I was the luckiest of lucky feral druids since I walked away with not one, but two pieces of awesome loot, including a giant bear claw of a staff.

Here I am (in my healing gear) standing on Nazan’s corpse:

We did the Vazruden and Nazan battle before Omor, but what did we know? Omor was a piece of cake in comparison.

We killed him and no time and then spent some fun dancing on his corpse.

Omor dropped the Tenacious Defender, which made Bos one happy warrior.

All in all, it was rockin’. Greens were dropping that replaced our existing blue gear, and I think we all walked away with something totally new and awesome. I love me the Outlands!

Get ‘yer 16-slot bags

In addition to the old Mooncloth Bags (which were 2 felcloth), I’m now about two skill points away from 16 slot Netherweave Bags. The main difference is that they’re now BoE… but they’re just 24 Netherweave cloth, which is about a run and a half of HC instances or a few minutes of humanoid grinding on the peninsula. And there’s no cooldown to wait for, so you can send stacks of cloth to Fornjot, and I’ll send back bags immediately!

Note that 18 slot bags are going to be a while. It’s many expensive skillups away, and I’m spending more time on my warrior (Surtr)’s fishing and cooking skills right now than I am on the priest’s tailoring or enchanting. But once I do, those luckily have no built-in cooldowns either.

Switching to TeamSpeak?

So Ventrilo has a hard cap of 8 people that can use the server at a time. We aren’t even eligible to get the Pro version which removes this cap. You have to be a business, for some reason. So I was thinking we should perhaps switch to TeamSpeak. It looks like it has no such cap, and we’re getting to the point where we want to do the 10-mans. Thoughts?

The gold farming ends… or has it only just begun?

I finally earned the 720g for my epic riding skill, enabling me to hop on the Frostwolf Howler I got back when it cost 8g and a run to exalted. I was helped along a lot by a lucky drop during a UBRS run that pushed me almost to the top… but the big question: will I start the grind for my warrior now? I don’t do it, but I can understand why people buy gold after having finished this.

That’s One Big Red Cat!

I respecced Nordoka last night from Marksmanship to Beast Mastery. The reason I held off for so long was my reluctance to lose Trueshot Aura, which gives us all more attack power when we’re grouped up.

Beast Mastery has some nice features at the end of the talent tree, though. There’s Spirit Bond, which regenerates health for me and my pet when we’re together, Intimidation which taunts and keeps me from drawing aggro, and Unleashed Fury and Frenzy which increase damage done and attack speed for the pet.

Then there’s Pathfinding, which increases my Aspect of the Cheetah and Aspect of the Pack by 6%. That comes in very handy running back through cleared caves and long instances after wipes. Not that we ever wipe. We never wipe.

My favorite, however, is Beastial Wrath. This “sends the pet into a rage causing 50% additional damage for 18 seconds. While enraged the beast does not feel pity or remorse or fear and it cannot be stopped unless killed.”

It also makes very big red cats.

Anyway, it looks like I’m actually doing a little more damage than usual. According to my 30 second snapshot damage meter, I’m averaging between 200 & 225 dps as compared to the 175 - 190 pre-respec.

We’ll have to see how it works out raiding, but it seems like good fun soloing.

Screenshot Monday

I was cleaning out my screenshots folder this morning. Here are some adventures from the last year that I managed to chronicle.

Dumata had this obsession with making sure his armor was coordinated. Here he is in a red phase, dancing on top of a recently mined Mithril deposit.

Hey Blizzard! I found a really deep hole in Feralas.

A beauty shot from one of our Sunken Temple runs about a year ago. Shaleyla, Nordoka, and Dumata are just visible in the background.

THAT doesn’t look right. Junecleaver flying underwater.

Two shots from the same hill outside ZF. Something about the geometry and background just seems to invite screenies.

Thanks for the indulgence. We now return you to your regularly scheduled obsessive-compulsive gameplay.

Scholomance progress

All of the original Crazy Cattle are now at level 60. We’ve been fighting through the high level non-raid dungeons. Tonight we took our second stab at Scholomance. The first time was a few weeks ago and it was a mess. We have all been busy playing our alts and seemed to forget what to do with these characters. We wiped and wiped and wiped some more. We didn’t get all that far, only to the first boss, Rattlegore. It had taken so long that this was about it.

Tonight was much more successful. We still had a few too many wipes, but we got much farther and didn’t make as many mistakes. I totally forgot about some of my spells, which was unfortunate. Remember to Innervate!

We cruised along, though I made us stop and take pictures when we got to this room of potential enemies. Basically, the room is packed with foes. But as long as you don’t talk to them or attack them, you’re safe. We didn’t mis-click, so all was well.

Onwards! One of the mini-bosses, Lady Illucia Barov, has the lovely mind-control ability. I got hit with it mid-battle and started attacking my friends. I thought it was cool how her name turned green and they all turned red. So here’s a shot of that:

When we got to Alexei Barov we started having serious issues. We gave it three tries and died three times. We managed to kept him down to 1300 health one of those times. It was seriously close. But ultimately, we failed. And that’s where we ended the night. Finished a couple of quests and am determined to succeed next time! Here’s the darn jerk who took us down:

Synchronized Casting

The up-and-coming “Young” Crazy Cattle ran Zul’Farrak last week. It was a smooth run with no real troubles. We were trying to get some of the good drops for cloth-wearing folk in there. Basically, we just mowed through as quickly as possible. I’m playing a mage, Aynaka, and we had Dizcordia in the party as well. We both happened to cast Evocation at the same time and it looked cool so I snapped a pic for your viewing pleasure.

Llane “slacker” PvP honor & rank guide

So, you’d like to have a spiffy title and maybe get some neat armor to boot. This is based on the details in WowWiki Honor System Guide and some observations from data on previous honor points -> ranking converions, catered to the “casual” Llane PvP player. It’ll let you know what rought number of honor points you need to get or maintain one of the lower ranks. Note that it won’t tell you how many weeks it’ll take to get to that rank if you get that standing - my general advice is to choose a relatively sedate month and grind honor like a madman and then stay at a sustainable pace rather than trying to do slightly more-than-normal and stay there, as it’ll take you three weeks (or more!) per rank up, which can be disappointing.

You’ll need the following amount of honor points to get the rough standing, based on what honor weekend it is:

And the following standing equates to the following rank:

So what are you waiting for? Get those nifty boots and cool titles!

Devilsaur revenge

When questing in Un’Goro Crater, who hasn’t been ganked by a Devilsaur? For those unfamiliar, they’re 54-55 elite T-Rex beasts that run faster than any mount and are surprisingly sneaky for being 10 stories tall. Pagaan, Dizcordia, and I decided we’d get some Devilsaur revenge (and do some skinning for Pagaan’s leatherworking) and hunted them - rather than trying to hide from them - for a change. In the picture you’ll notice two… we found one, killed it easily (our second of the evening), and then its twin popped up and two-shotted Dizcordia while we were posing for screen shots! Pagaan and I finished it off and we still feel like we got our revenge, but I’m pretty sure that when I reach 60 I’m going to come back and farm the things just to teach ‘em their place.