That's Alot of Eggs

I was offline for the weekend. For an amazing change of pace, no office or work duties required my time yesterday and I spent a very wonderful day getting reaquainted with my children.

Monday, I found myself running around Kharanos hopped up on leftover  Peeps and Jelly Beans collecting hundreds of virtual eggs. That's right, Noblegarden is here!

Though the holiday has been around for several years, this is the first year I've really given an egg about it. Sure, I tried a few years back. But the competition for egg spawns was (and remains) hellacious. That kinda killed the holiday for me.  However, aside from Noblegarden, my single remaining obstacle to the Violet Proto-Drake is now Children's Week (more specifically the PVP element of Children's Week), so I figured I could spend a day gathering eggs and still complete What a Long, Strange Trip It's Been.

Anyway, Monday was mission Noblegarden.  The result?  Success!

Now that I did it (and made some mistakes), please consider some advice...

First, accept the A Tisket, A Tasket, a Noblegarden Basket quest for your Egg Basket.  Save yourself 10 chocolates by not turning in the quest unless you'd like the extra gold.  Next, settle into collecting a few hundred Brightly Colored Egg. I did the majority of my egg collecting in Kharanos -- mainly because it's not Goldshire and I didn't want to travel too far from Stormwind. Goldshire made my skin crawl; it's so camped that you have to camp a camp (or ninja-loot the eggs being camped, but that's a 50 DKP minus in my book).

So, I settled in for Kharanos. As I progressed, I got into a rhythm. I basically made circles around the village (in front of the Inn, weaving back behind the warlock trainer, past the flight master, crossing the road to the hunter trainer,  looping back in front of the trade building towards the mountaineer on the hill by the crossroads, and then back across the road to complete the loop. Once you make a few loops, you get to know where the eggs spawn and then it's simply a race to clickie.

Oh, yeah... make sure you've equipped your Egg Basket.  I used this macro (bound to F1) to assist my collection and inventory management:

#showtooltip
/use [mod:alt] Brightly Decorated Egg; Egg Basket

When I wanted to open my eggs, ALT-F1 did the trick.  When I wanted egg-powered rocket boots, F1 did the trick.  I felt pretty fancy, and I didn't even need to ask a gnome to help me with the macro!

Word to the wise: do the Chocoholic achievement first, not last. I saved that one to the end, and in the process of farming up the remaining chocolates, I received two duplicates of my Spring Rabbit's Foot that I had already spent 100 chocolates purchasing.  Items needed for other achievements also drop randomly out of the eggs, so if you get really lucky you may only need to collect 105 chocoloates (100 for Chocoholic and 5 for Noble Garden).

My recommendation: collect eggs until you have enough chocolates for Chocoholic and you've looted either the items required or you've gathered enough chocolates to purchase the items from the vendor.  Once you've got it all, start the achievement spam!

While you're heading to Stormwind for Noble Garden, don your White Tuxedo Shirt, Black Tuxedo Pants and Elegant Dress. Now you can kiss or be kissed for Blushing Bride while you're there!  

Also, equip your Spring Flowers so that you can stalk female characters of the various races (except Goblins and Worgen) for Shake Your Bunny-Maker. I was able to knock out the alliance requirements fairly easily with a few stalks of the Auction House in Stormwind, but for Horde requireements, I flew over to Razor Hill in Durotar and hung out for a while.  When you do that, just watch the guards because you will get pegged as PVP if you get close to them (unless that's your thing).  Another option -- to the detriment of your battlegroup team, is equipping your flowers in your BGs and tossing ears on players before you swap weapons and re-acquaint them with the spirit healer.

Hard Boiled requires you becoming a rabbit in Un'Goro. I did this one the hard way (instead of having a buddy zap me with the Blossoming Branch already in Un'Goro. The hard way consisted of getting a random bunny buff from looting an egg, then popping my Kirin Tor ring (because hearthing or porting doesn't break illusion like flying does!), hopping my way to the Caverns of Time portal in Dalaran and then hopping across Tanaris into Un'Goro while avoiding all the bad guys (because damage kills the buff!).  All told, took me 10 minutes to get the achievement once I was transformed in Kharanos.  Be smart... bring a buddy with a wand and just transform when you're already there!

Desert Rose requires Spring Robes (looted from eggs or purchased with 50 chocolates) to be activated in 5 zones.  I could have nailed this after I did my Hard Boiled, but I didn't think to purchase the robe first!  So I wasted some travel time back and forth.

Once you get your companion from a Spring Rabbit's Foot, he needs to get frisky in each of the four starting areas. Not hard (especially with other players there farming). If it's late or sparse, you may need to bring a pre-arranged partner for your love-bunny.

All in all, Noblegarden is one of the easier holidays. There's not much strategy to it besides collecting eggs and seeking out females of the opposite faction (especially now that neutral cities like Dalaran and Shattrath City are ghost towns). Still, a pretty easy way for the "Peashooter the Noble" title and one more notch in the Meta!

Besides... with 4.1 dropping today (according to rumors), who wants to spend all their time on holiday achievements!  

Glory of the Outdated Material

Last week I shared how I'm struggling to get into the content of the Cataclysm expansion. Part of my conflict with the new stuff is I'm still really -- and I mean really -- enjoying the older stuff.  Some guildmates and I have been plugging our way through collecting guild raid and personal achievements from the older instances on Friday and Saturday nights.  These runs have been the highlight of my week.

Fixated on the Old
My recent armory achievement feed tells the story; we're clearing Ulduar, Naxxramas, Obsidian Sanctum, Onyxia and even Outland raids. I've always had a bit of OCC on completing achievements, and these off-night raids are awesome from my view to help knock out the outstanding missing raid achievements.  It's pure bonus that some of the achievements reward titles and drake mounts, too.

I've been the one coordinating the raids, and I've been basing that around a few meta achievements like Glory of the Raider, Glory of the Ulduar Raider and Glory of the Icecrown Raider.

What strikes me, though, is the fact that even though we're running older content that we out-level and ou-gear, coordination and communication are still required.  Achievements like Shocking require you all to actually move in the right location.  And They Would All Go Down Together forces you to manage DPS and not just blindly go nucking futs on your damage.  We have been successful with the majority of our attempts (as expected).  What was not expected: we've struggled on some of these achievements.

Seriously? How did they do that at level 80?

Achievement farming was back in session Saturday night - this time in Heroic mode.  We were able to face-roll through Storming the Citadel, The Plagueworks, and The Crimson Hall.  Well... actually, we completed The Crimson Hall, but I can't honestly say we face-rolled it...  Read on!

Heroic Icecrown Citadel (10 man)
In general, the bosses have more health and do more damage. But, in addition, the fights have a distinct element or two compared to regular mode.  Let's check 'em out, shall we?
Lord Marrowgar

• Coldflame last 8 seconds instead of 3 seconds
• Bone Spike Graveyard occurs during Bone Storm

No real change from regular mode. Still have to dodge the flames and free spiked raid members (which will occur more frequently). With a level 85 raid, we single tanked / two healed this one without issues.

Lady Deathwhisper

• Threat issues in Phase 2
• Cultist adds continue to spawn during Phase 2
• Vengeful Shades cast AoE instead of single target with Vengeful Blast
• Dominate Mind forces some CC of your mind-controlled raid member

Phase 1 is pretty much the same as regular mode. Phase 2 adds some complexity. Adds will continue to spawn, so even at level 85 we dual tanked / dual healed. Shreks can still put a hurtin' on a non-tank, so those need to be controlled. DPS and Healers need to move away from the ghosts, because they do go boom. Different sites say different things as far as being tauntable or not, but we did struggle with threat. Thankfully, with the DPS we had it didn't last long.

Gunship Battle

• Rocket explosions have a knockback effect. 

Pfft. A well-earned break after Lady D! We actually completed this with three people off the ship (afk for raid bio break when a newcomer clicked the wrong dude). Only 3 people had the jetpacks. Wasn't pretty, but it got done.

Deathbringer Saurfang

• Blood Beasts get buffed with Scent of Blood and Resistant Skin

No distinction from regular mode - still need to not AoE, and the Blood Beasts need to go down ASAP. We wound up getting two raid members marked because folks weren't switching fast enough.

Festergut

• Professor Putricide chimes in with Malleable Goo

With the addition of malleable goo, ranged and heals need to be aware of that and dodge or it gimps output. Otherwise, it's the same fight as regular just faster and stronger than before...  Sorry, Steve Austin flashback there!

Rotface

• Professor Putricide chimes in with Vile Gas

With the addition of Vile Gas, try to spread out a bit more.  Otherwise, no big deal.

Professor Putricide

• Phase changes are not marked by Tear Gas; instead both an orange Gas Cloud and a green Volatile Ooze spawn
• Unbound Plague which causes Plague Sickness when it jumps to a new target

This one becomes more complicated than regular with the plague mechanic. Even at 85, you need to coordinate passing that off after 10 secs or so and then move so that the person that passed it (and now has the sickness debuff) won't get it again. This caused one wipe for us until we looked up the fight and went -- aha!

Blood Prince Council

• Kinetic Bombs fall faster and their Kinetic Bomb explosion hurts more
• Keleseth casts a Shadow Prison

Basically, don't try what we tried at first which is just burn the boss and don't worry about the kinetic bombs. Those suckers hurt. You need to be disciplined and still control the kinetic bombs while dealing with all of the other crap going on.

I ranged-tanked Keleseth, and that shadow prison sucks and sucks hard core. It sure adds a level of complexity to running around the room to collect the dark nuclei. 

Our fifth attempt was successful: we had a tank on both Valanar and Taldaram, while the hunter range-tanked Keleseth. We also ran three healers (though one was discipline so added some smite spammage). This was not a fun fight.

Blood-Queen Lana'thel

• Presence of the Darkfallen boosts the damage of her Shroud of Sorrow aura by 5% per vampire in the raid.

This, on the other hand, is a fun fight. The heroic mode becomes more of a DPS race because her aura increases the more vampires she has out in the raid, but she was dead  with only 3 vampires even with one mind-controlled mental shammy going ballistic amongst the ranks at the end of the fight.

Valithria Dreamwalker

• The healers entering the Emerald Dream take a bit of damage
• Valithria takes damage during the fight

This one boils down to not ever letting the stacks of Emerald Vigor fall off. Valithria takes damage during the entire fight and has more health, so the healing is a bit increased.  We went with 2 healers into the dream (2 holy priests) and had a resto shaman healing the tank and the remaining raid. We missed the enrage timer, but again Binding Heal powered by 20+ stacks of vigor is pretty amazing, so the priests were able to save the raid. 

Sindragosa

• Unchained Magic's Instability now has AoE effect
• Failing to block a Frost Bomb is an insta-kill

We didn't actually complete this one yet, so it's still a thing-to-do.  But, where we failed was losing too many raid members during her air phase because they weren't hiding behind the ice blocks correctly. There's also a re-tuning of the damage on the blocks because we need to balance our level 85 DPS against the increased health of the ice blocks. So, basically, it's balance. 

The other thing to remember is that when casters get Unchained Magic, when Instability goes boom they need to be away from the raid because it does have an AoE effect in heroic.

The Lich King

• Phase 1 - summons a Shadow Trap
• Phase 2 - Val'kyrs can't be killed. Once they get to 50%, they drop the target and fly up over the raid and then begin casting Life Sipon.
• Phase 3 - Harvest Soul is raid-wide
• Frostmourne - the whole raid comes here and kills Wicked Spirits before they hit the ground and explode for lots of damage.

This just sounds awesome. 

Phase 1 : Now we have both the plague mechanic and a defile-like mechanic during the Careful Aim phase. Run towards the aberrations and run away from the raid depending on which debuff you catch.

Phase 2: Move defile out and collapse on the center to minimize time spent running all over the platform and avoiding having too many Valks up there sucking life from you...

Phase 3: Eat a boat-load of AoE damage, survive, and kill wicked spirits for 60 seconds until you port back to the platform (probably right into a defile) and then manage the Vile spirits that will be bombarding us with AoE explosions.

Seriously?

To all of you who actually did complete Fall of the Lich King at level 80, my hat's off to you.  I'm in achievement farming mode and struggling with the encounters. Remembering how I struggled with the Lich King fight in the months prior to Cataclysm, and fresh off being thrashed by encounters attuned for characters 5 levels below me, I'm honestly impressed by those players and guilds that not only completed the normal modes of these fights, but then went on to Heroic kills. Seriously, kudos! 

Achievement Farming: ICC

Older content-based achievements are like used cars. To some, a used car is just that, used. To others, it's still a great vehicle that has new-to-them features.  When it comes to achievements, I'm a used car shopper: I still think achivements are worth it even though they may be in older content. The content is often totally new to me, and I enjoy exploring it even when I out-level it.

A few other guildies are joining me in casually pursuing the Glory of the Icecrown Raider and claiming the Reins of the Bloodbathed Frostbrood Vanquisher. As a bit of background, we were successful in actually defeating Arthas before the release of Cataclysm. There were two 10m teams going during those last few weeks prior to the release, and I had characters on each of the two teams. I was successful on my priest, but I had an unexpected conflict the night that Pea's team successfully earned their Kingslayer titles
Well, Saturday night accomplished that in an absolutely entertaining achievement fest. And yes, we did overgear and out-level the raid, so of course it's nothing to brag about. However, it was a ton of friggin' fun and for those of you looking for some guild bonding time, I highly recommend the exercise!
In the 10m group, there were seven of us that had cleared all of ICC on at least one character. Three folks never had to opportunity. We were able to complete 9 of the 12 boss-specific achievements (missing the Blood Council, Sindragosa and The Lich King fights) in about 4 hours. Also, for the characters there for the first time, it was impossible to complete Lana'thel's achievement. Also, we attempted everything on regular mode with plans to return on heroic mode.

Fights and Tactics

Marrowgar

Achievement: Boned
Difficulty: Easy
You still need to be on your toes just a bit with the bone spikes, but with level 85 DPS, these went down so fast it was nowhere near as critical as it was at level 80. We still had everyone switch over to spikes, but they died in 1 seconds of the required 8 seconds most of the time. Also, we're only 7 strong at this point in the night, so we single tanked and dual-healed.

Lady Deathwhisper

Achievement: Full House
Difficulty: Medium
Usually, the raid had to leave up a single version of each kind of mob spawned during the encounter. That's the elegant method. Our method? Brute force. Again, we single tanked (now had 8 raid members) and the tank's duties were to run around the room gathering up the adds that spawned and keeping Lady D's attention once her mana shield was done. DPS essentially focus on burning down Lady D as quickly as possible. We had a few deaths on this fight, as the adds got a bit overpopulated and the shrek was still able to one-shot level 85 healers if they took aggro.

Gunship Battle

Achievement: I'm on a Boat
Difficulty: Easy
In hindsight, we wasted effort doing this one by actually coordinating who jumped across. We ended up killing 4 battlemages. Our raid makeup was still 8 at this point, so the tank actually jumped the first two times with a rogue DPS. I pet-tanked the adds on our boat with Shermanator the Beetle (parked in center on aggressive with auto-cast Growl, ShellShield and Thunderstomp). The rogue used vanish to remain over and help with DPS, and I hopped over for 3 and 4. Saurfang's axes still hurt, and both tank, rogue, me and another ended up dying before our gunners could down the boat.
I argue that we beat it for real, but even so all 10 members got the achievement. That's odd, because 6 of us already HAD the achievement, which makes me suspect "bug"!

Saurfang

Achievement: I've Gone and Made a Mess
Difficulty: Easy
This one was over and done with in less than 2 minutes. We were able to burn down Saurfang before he spawned the third set of bloodbeasts. Our ranged switched over to the beasts when they popped, and we also added 2 final members to the raid so we did actually have 2 tanks swapping on Saurfang. Otherwise, this one is simple.

Rotface

Achievement: Dances with Oozes
Difficulty: Easy
Not a whole lot of elegance to this one, either. Essentially, allow the little oozes to spawn and stay stuck to their initial target. If possible, try to spread out so that being next to someone doesn't actually allow the little oozes to spawn. It's essentially a DPS race to get Rotface down before a big ooze has a chance to form and reach 5 stacks where it can explode.

Festergut

Achievement: Flu Shot Shortage
Difficulty: Easy
We used to dance around and collapse on spores... Here, just stand, shoot and loot.  This one was a joke.

Professor Putricide

Achievement: Nausea, Heartburn, Indigestion ...
Difficulty: Easy
The only trick to recall in this fight is that your DPS (especially ranged) does need to switch to the oozes when they pop.  In our fight, the 2nd tank controlled the abomination and just sucked up slimes. We got a green ooze at the end of phase 1, an orange ooze and then 1 final green ooze at the end of phase 2, and then popped heroism and burned down the Professor for the achieve.

Blood Council

Achievement: The Orb Whisperer
Difficulty: Medium
You would think that this one would be easy, but we struggled. Ultimately, we passed this and just got the kill, but here's where we struggled: Blueberries all dying and threat management. We had a tank on Keleseth to grab the blueberries and the other tank grabbed the other princes. We got bounced around a few times due to proximity, and it just caused confusion.
Next time, the plan is this: hunter/warlock ranged tank Keleseth. Dedicate a tank to each other prince. Spread out. Manage the beach ball and then profit.  My thinking is that there is no need to complicate this and just allow one person to manage each boss, because there is no issue in healing or DPS, it's simply a matter of controlling the fight.  Stay tuned on this one, as I expect to get it next time!

Blood Queen Lana'thel

Achievement: Once Bitten, Twice Shy
Difficulty: Easy
We had eight members who had already killed Lana'thel and either had been or not been bitten.  The two that had not done the fight were the first two intended targets. To ensure one of the two of them got bitten first, all other DPS waited to do any damage until the first bite was out, and then it was open season and directing the next bite sequence.
This requires two separate runs, so those that were'nt successful will be next time as we control who gets the bite.  Plus, I'm kinda looking forward to seeing the recount with the damage boost from being bitten!

Dreamwalker Valithria

Achievement: Portal Jockey
Difficulty: Easy
We ran 1 tank and three healers. The same priority for kills exists, as those blazing skeletons still do output some damage, but all in all this is just a matter of ensuring that three people go in the dream every time using a different portal.  Our third portal jockey was our mage, who LOVED the spellpower boost from the green balloons! The only requirement here is making sure all three portals are consumed each time they spawn.

Sindragosa

Achievement: All You Can Eat
Difficulty: Medium
This is the final phase of Sindy's fight were you use the ice tombs to clear the debuff.  With having a few team members who never saw this fight in WOLTK, this will take a bit of practice to get the dance down. It boils down to using the tombs placed in the right areas to hide behind to clear stacks before they exceed 5.

Lich King

Achievement: Been Waiting a Long Time for This
Difficulty: Hard
At this point, we were getting tired, so we didn't feel like messing with letting the plague stack that high. When we do, our strategy will be to monitor DPS on the Lich King so that he doesn't drop below 70% before the plague has stacked that high.  It's going to be a bit of hanging out and chatting while cleansing.  Once it stacks, then the fight goes on as normal.
One note on this fight; the defile / val'kyr phase is still a bit of a challenge and if you're not on your toes you will still wipe.

Thoughts on Heroic

The next attempts will be on heroic mode. We should get both the Blood Council and the Blood Queen achievements regardless of regular vs heroic, but my gut tells me that we'll need to come back and do Sindragosa and the Lich King on regular mode for the two fight-specific achievements. Although, we may not, so we'll see.

Addon Help

Finally, for the achievement junkies out there, I was not prepared to track our progress as I did not have an addon installed to track if we failed the achievements during the encounter. Next time, I'll give RaidAchievement a shot and see how it goes. I really like the idea of knowing if we fail an achievement so that we can wipe and restart instead of waiting another week. If anyone has any other suggestions on either tactics or addons, I'd welcome your feedback!

Hunting Elders

Well my grand plans for redeeming myself never got off the ground. Hotel wireless speed is sadly lacking, and my latency of up in the 2,500 range pretty much meant I'd be dead weight in any kind of heroic, so I passed on joining guild mates in random heroics.  Instead, I'll be farming achievements this week until I can track down some real internet bandwidth.
Lucky for me, Lunar Festival is back!
This is my third time through the Elders. Since I'm edging closer all the time to an Elder title in real life (I remember when remote controls had cords, and before that the remote control was the kid closest to the TV set who got to get up and twist the knobs to the next station!), I may as well finally complete the To Honor One's Elders achievement.
I was parked in Stormwind, so after scrabbling for apples and fishing up a swallowed locket, out I headed on my flying mount. First, OMG flying makes doing the elders so much easier. I tried one or two before on the ground mount, and promptly said no friggin' way. Goldshire, Sentinel Hill, Zul'Gurub, Booty Bay, Blasted Lands, Searing Gorge...  wait a sec!  Where the heck is Rumblerock in Searing Gorge?

Phasing Strikes Back

Bugger!  He was phased and I wasn't in the right dimension to find his little buns. Well, I'm all dressed up, so I may as well knock out some quests!  If you haven't done so, you will need to complete the quests with John J. Keeshan at the western camp.  Eventually, as you start giving gifts to Ogres while wearing your Halloween costume, you'll see the Elder pop on the side of Dreadmaul Rock.
By that point, I only needed two more quests for Burning Steppes Quests, so I went ahead and knocked those out and enjoyed the subsequent achievement splash!
Next, while I was in Burning Steppes, why not knock out the dungeon elders for Blackrock Depths and Blackrock Spire criteria of Elders of the Dungeons.
Am I done?  Nope! Not really all that close.  Still have to knock out the northern half of the Eastern Kingdoms, all of Kalimdor, most of the dungeons, and the Alliance capitals. Ugh, I've got some travelling to do!  But, I'll be on spotty wifi all week, so I guess I should pace myself.
Anyways, hope your week in WoW is off to a more exciting start than mine!

The Best Title Ever

I realize that most players have clearing Cataclysm raid content in their scope sights right now. My personal raid team is still getting some last few gear drops from heroics, and if we can pull a team together this weekend we'll give Blackwing Descent  a go.  Don't judge!  Like me, most of my raid team hase limited play time.  When I can log in and the guild tanks or friend tanks are already in a dungeon, the DPS queues average about an hour for a heroic. On those nights, my entire evening can consist of running some dailies and waiting for a single PuG heroic (which falls apart on the first wipe 66% of the time anyways), but that's a different post.

Back to the topic of titles.  While I'm on hold in the LFM queue, I'm using my time to run my dailies and work on achievements that spark my interest.  I recently earned Therazane, but at the same time I was pleasantly surprised to also see 35 Exalted Reputations pop up. Thirty five? Yikes!

The Goal
The next reputation milestone is 40 Exalted Reputations.  Seriously?!? A title? ... the Exalted! You mean to tell me I can run around Stormwind doing Feeling Crabby as "Peashooter the Exalted"? Oh, I gotta get me some of this!

The Plan
I need a plan of attack. What factions can I knock out quickly?
First? Spend about 350g on the AH (Dark Iron Ore, Core Leather, Fiery Core and Lava Core, head to Blackrock Depths, hit the bar and bam! I'm exalted with my dark iron brethren of the Thorium Brotherhood.

At this moment, I'm sitting at 36/40.

Next?  Well...I'm still working on "Next".  I'm eyeing the normal progression with the Cataclysm factions that I still have to go (I'm revered), including: Baradin's Wardens, Ramkahen, The Earthen Ring and Wildhammer Clan.  I'm running my dailies in Tol Barad (and in the peninsula if we can actually hold the friggin' towers) for the Wardens, Twilight Highlands for the Wildhammer, and Uldum for the Ramkahens as well as sporting my Tabard of Ramkahen for any rep I can squeeze from heroics and/or regular random runs. The druids of the Ring are gonna have to wait until I can ride a camel.

I'm also sporadically wrapping up my Outland rep with Netherwing and the ogres of Ogri'la. These aren't challenging, but I'm finding them very tedious.

Looking ahead, if I can get all of these, that will put me at 42/45 for 45 Exalted Reputations. Gonna need some raid help for the remaining three!

When I finally get this one in the bag (and assuming that nagging feeling that this was nerfed with Cataclysm to be the reward from 45 is just not true), I plan on sporting my Tuxedo Jacket and dancing on the steps of the Stormwind bank in celebration!