Elementals and the last day

This is the last night before the patch that destroys WoW as I’ve known it since starting playing.
This is both good and bad.. good because it brings loads of awesome new stuff.. bad because it’s going to remove stuff I’ve not really played to death yet.

Over the last few days, we’ve been dealing with Elemental Invasions every few hours, where elementals attack the cities.

Eventwise, step one is preparing the area, or evacuating if you were a low-level player.
In Thunder Bluff, preparation involved placing enormous windbreaks around the city, while in Orgrimmar we had large spiky barricades.

Stage two involves freeing trapped villagers and fighting off the elementals.. killing enough allows the rifts to be closed and the invasion to end.. temporarily.  The elementals were harder to kill than I expected, and we turned out to not be quite so immune to being trapped ourselves.

As well as elementals, there were also a series of four bosses to deal with.

Grand Ambassador Flamelash was one of the harder bosses for me, as he kept spawning rather nasty fires which dealt a lot of damage.  Don’t stand in fire!

Representing Earth: Crown Princess Theredras.

I had a few line of sight issues at first, along with the fear of being thrown too far away from the group, but after a few repeats she wasn’t too difficult.. we hit her over and over tonight, until she dropped me some very nice gear: the Earth Bride’s Gown 🙂

I found Kai’ju Gahz’rilla the easiest boss to deal with although there was more damage being taken by the group.  Ice spikes were easily avoidable, and I could still heal on the move.

Fighting here reminded me of levelling a long while ago, when I was frustrated by the enemies polymorphing us into frogs.

Prince Sarusan was the last of the four bosses and well.. “ouch, cyclones” sums things up nicely!  Getting thrown into the air meant lots of damage on landing, and levitate made no difference.. it wasn’t always easy to avoid, either.

So.. the server just shut down, logging us out on the roof of Orgrimmar’s bank.  What will I see tomorrow.. and will I like it?

More Pre-Cata and More Pets!

Three more pets have been added, bringing my total to 56!  Last weekend, a friend added the very cute Leaping Hatchling to my pet collection!
He does actually do what it says on his nameplate too.. 🙂

Aside from the pre-cata events, we’re really not taking the game too seriously at the moment.. instead trying to explore areas of the map rather more unpopulated than most.  I think this post might end up a little image-heavy 😉

On top of the world.. and then back down again.  Coming down was harder than I thought, and as I cancelled Levitate to avoid being floated out too far, I ended up not putting it back on before crashing into the side of the mountain.  Fairly thankful for Erilas 😉

This weekend was a mixture of rep-grinding and chasing pets and mounts; I picked up the Phoenix Hatchling from Kael’thas Sunstrider’s dead body on one run 🙂

Auchindoun also received rather a lot of attention, for rep and to try and get the Reins of the Ravenlord.  I mentioned that we weren’t taking things too seriously..

Later a party member decided to run out of Line of Sight a few too many times, and instead of chasing after him I hit /dance.  I then realised the Inner Focus affect looked rather like pom-poms, so decided to stick with it, and leave Vorlak to play with his new friends a little longer 🙂

We were a bit more well behaved during the next bit.. arresting cultists in and around Orgrimmar.  Like with the trolls all the way back in the earliest pre-Cata events, I rather liked having a group of NPCs following me around.

After taking my five arrested cultists to where they needed to be, I realised I still had the shackles, and there was a nearby Cultist.. Pet Cultist!  Sadly he was crushed by Vorlak’s mean kodo, Rufus, on our way out of Orgrimmar.*

*He despawned 🙁

We also went for a run around Karazhan to pick up loot, including random stuff such as the ‘tentacle staff’.  Why an Orc Warrior would want one of those.. corrupt much!

As a friend hadn’t done Shattered Halls, we took a little detour round there too.  I thought this throne was rather cool 🙂

Last night we did the Elemental Invasions in Thunder Bluff and Orgrimmar.  Placing massive windbreaks around Thunder Bluff was easy, but fighting the elementals was surprisingly hard as they just would not die.  Dealing with the Fire elementals in Orgrimmar was easier as there were plenty more people to kill them more quickly.

Then after all this, my friend gave me another pet – the Winter Reindeer! <3

So very tiny, and so cute 🙂