Countdown to Legion

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Legion is right around the corner, and with all of the hype going on lately I’ve wandered back in game to play around with my level 100 characters and perhaps get another one (or two) to 100 before the expansion. I’m pretty sure I’ll be playing my priest when legion hits, but there’s always a chance I’ll decide on someone else instead. Priest is just what I’m most comfortable with, and the character I’ve dedicated the most time to (achievements and what not, even though I know those are account wide).

Even though I’ve had multiple level 100s for quite a while now, I still hadn’t gathered the courage to defeat Kazzak in Tanaan Jungle. Today I decided it was most certainly time. I got a nice cloak upgrade and a few felblight for crafting. Plus the achievement for defeating him. Before that I had been going through the LFRaid groups looking for ones that would reward me the goodie bags for queuing as a healer. I got a neat empowered apexis fragment from that which I’ll probably pass down to an alt to use so they can have a piece of nice gear too. My main is just slightly shy of 700 ilevel, and I couldn’t be more tickled about that.

Having fun in a game that I’ve played (off and on) for years now is important to me and I’m glad I can still get that same sort of joy from it. If you want to add me to battlenet, I’m Stargrace#1783 and while you’ll typically see me wandering through Azeroth there are times I take a dip into Diablo3 and other Blizzard games too (Overwatch maybe?) in time.

As always, happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!

Distant Ramblings

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Lately, I’ve felt like I’ve been floating along. I know I tend to refrain from much RL here on MmoQuests and keep it to posts about gaming, but there’s a lot more to daily interactions besides gaming. My friends are playing everything from WoW to Otome steam games and everything in between. I’ve been floating along, feeling distant from it all.

There was the big kerfuffle over legacy servers that everyone seemed to be involved in and it’s all we heard about. Guess what, legacy servers don’t bring back that feeling that you long to recapture. Nothing will do that because we were all different people back then, with different worries and goals in life. Have games changed over the years? Sure, games have changed. So have people.

There was the butt incident. What an odd thing to get worked up over.

GW2 revamped a lot of their latest expansion because people spoke up about how not fun it was. I’m glad the changes seem to be working. GW2 is a game I think I love to play only to find out that I don’t actually love it at all. Every time.

A new season has started in Diablo, and while I wanted to get all involved with that, I fell short, again. I just feel like it’s the same game and re-playing it each season doesn’t excite me.

I’ve been playing Wurm Unlimited on the Sklotopolis server still and it seems to be about the only thing holding my attention gaming wise. The large deed Moumix, Maya, and I are working on is coming along wonderfully. I’m working my channeling up, weapon smithing hit 60, and I’m saving up for a merchant. I have two auctions going on at the moment which should give me enough silver to buy a merchant form (10s).

It’s summer here, and the weather is lovely. My anxiety has been bouncing off the walls and I’m not sure if it’s due to the pregnancy or just that time of year. 14 weeks as of tomorrow. I’m so very blessed, but it’s also scary being so far from my family and not really knowing anyone here (still). I feel like I’m floundering.

Monk Adventures Continue

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The Noblegarden world event is taking place right now and runs from March 28th until April 4th. This is a combination spring / Easter type event and I always have a lot of fun with it. This year I ran around collecting 100 chocolates so that I could get the Mystical Spring Bouquet companion pet (you can’t level this pet up, it’s just for decoration). The Noblegarden area was relatively empty, I saw a handful of bunnies bouncing around as we ran after eggs but there seemed to be enough to go around. I’m still missing a few of the achievements from the event, but after collecting 100 eggs I was ready to move on. One of those achievements requires another 100 eggs and you’re supposed to eat all of the chocolate. That means I need 200 eggs. No thanks!

My monk tank is now sitting at a lovely level 48. The monk tank I was playing with decided to level ahead and is now over level 70. I decided to slow things down, and instead of running dungeons I turned to questing. I’ve seen very little of Azeroth since.. well, pre-cataclysm era, and I wanted to see how things had changed over the years. I started out in Thousand Needles, a land that used to be nothing but desert, and is now a giant lake. The quests here were fun, you get an under water buff so you’re able to move about quickly, and you even get a boat that you can summon at will. This comes in handy when you want to get to Tanaris, the next zone on my list. Down at the southern end of Thousand Needles is a path through the water. You can swim it, but that would go pretty slow.

Being back in WoW is nice and relaxing and I’m pleasantly excited about Legion even though it’s still a ways off. Unfortunately the cost for tokens has skyrocketed these past few weeks – probably with the excitement of the latest movie trailers that have been released. A few people coming back here and there who would rather use in-game gold to pay for their subscription (and rightly so). My account is paid for the next year so for now I don’t need to worry about such things.

I should be able to get the little monk to level 50 early this week, and we’ll see how things go from there.

As always, happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!

Overpowered Lowbie Monk Tanks

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After reaching level 33 with my troll warrior, I suddenly decided that I wanted to try out a monk instead. See, I have an alliance monk, but it was one of those boosted characters that I rarely played so even though she’s level 92 I have absolutely no idea what I’m doing. Compared to my other characters she feels like she’s made of tissue paper. I die on practically every WoD quest.

I decided to make a Tauren this time around. Getting to level 12 was pretty easy – and then I had a thought. I wanted to catch up to the other 33 monk I’ve been playing with and I wondered if I could go and solo Ragefire Chasm. Once again my character was wearing heirloom (pants, shirt, shoulders, hat, charms, necklace, cloak, weapon) but would that be enough? I was pretty certain that my warrior would not have been able to solo it at that level, I could barely hold my own at level 33. Maybe monks were different. I decided to go down the tank spec, one I’ve never played before. I’ve always WANTED to tank, I keep saying I am eager to learn and then when it comes time to queue for dungeons I completely freeze.

I was still too low level to pick up the quests, but that was alright. I’d do a run or two to get some levels and then snag them – IF I could complete the zone.

Turns out I could. Easily. I went from 13 to 19 in a matter of minutes, I think I cleared the place twice. I was excited to hit 20 because monks get a daily buff that grats 50% more experience from kills and quests. I filled my bags with some green loot to sell on the AH and by the time I hit 19 I had already fallen in love with the class. We’ll see how long that lasts.

Ragefire Chasm was a breeze – could Wailing Caverns go just as smooth?

It was a bit more difficult, but by then I had a heal that I could use on myself and it was just a matter of spamming some attacks, regenerating some chi, and healing myself if the damage got to be too much. The zone was certainly harder than Ragefire, but just like the first dungeon I was able to solo it with no deaths.

Since I had my 50% bonus buff, I actually went from level 19 to 25 in one run of the dungeon.

Nice.

Now I’m debating Blackfathom Deeps. So far the monk tank is incredibly fun – even though I’m sure it can’t last. Playing through the game this way is exciting, and it’s a break for me from doing the usual garrison runs every single day. It’s exactly what I need to renew my interest.

As always, happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!

Lowbie Shenanigans in World of Warcraft

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I’ve been playing both alliance and horde for most of WoD, between two servers. Over the weekend I decided to create a brand new horde character on the server where I had no horde, and level up by doing quests and exploring the post-cataclysm world, something I had not done for many years.

My troll warrior, Moglette, is outfitted in heirloom for the slots where I have the gear (I think I’m missing some of the more uncommon items, like rings) and in a duo set out to explore the lands. On a whim we decided to try dungeons, just to see if they could be done as a duo when there was no healer present. My warrior is down the DPS line, with tank as a back up. The duo consists of a monk playing alongside my warrior, and they decided to go tank for now too. So one DPS, one tank, and lots of mean mobs, starting with Ragefire Chasm.

The dungeon was so easy, and so rewarding, that by the time we had completed it we set out for Wailing Caverns. That was completed in a duo pretty easily too and we got some black fang gloves that sold for a whopping 4,000 gold! At level 20 playing a new faction that didn’t have any cash, this was a big huge bonus. I immediately upgraded bags.

After Wailing Caverns it was time to head to Ashenvale, completing quests along the way. Basically I skipped the barrens because I leveled through them too quickly. Ashenvale quests are… frustrating. I didn’t have fun working through this zone at all. I continued my way up the coast and eventually ended up at Blackfathom Deeps. All of these dungeons have been revamped since I was in them last, and so it was as if I was doing them all for the first time. I had fond memories of the old versions, but the new ones are not that bad.

Next up was Scarlet Halls, which is completely different than what I remembered, and the first dungeon where we had a death or two in the duo. Mobs hurt without a healer, and the bosses had mechanics that couldn’t simply be ignored by brute force. I did get a few levels there and my little Moglette is sitting at a pretty respectable level 31. I picked mining and blacksmithing as my professions, along with the usual fishing / first aid / cooking / archaeology.

It has been pretty fun so far and I’m eager to see more of Azeroth this way – without rushing, without power leveling, without buying in to level 90 (or 100).

As always, happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!