Baradin Hold, Zul’Aman and Serpentshrine Cavern

Baradin Hold, a level 85 raid, was tonight’s conquest.. as the Horde had won in the PvP Tol Barad and therefore controlled the area, this rather short raid was available for a few hours.  Finding people to start with was a bit of a pain, as there were others looking to make groups of their own as well, with specific class requirements and so on.  Once the group was assembled, the worst of things was over.. we ended up with nice enough people 😉

At the moment the raid contains just one boss, Argaloth, though more may be added in time.. as well as only having the one boss, we split into two groups..  Argaloth’s Meteor Slash ability deals a lot of damage to whoever is in front of him.. this requires players to stand on the tank so that the damage is shared between all those players rather than all going to the tank and killing him.  The two groups then swap, so Argaloth hits the second group while the first recover.

(Screenshot taken from Wowhead)

By splitting into two groups with a healer in each, it just felt like I had my regular group to look after plus a few extra people to heal every so often.. so aside from the requirement for more players in the group, it didn’t feel very much different from a regular dungeon fight.  Our first two attempts failed, but we took him out on the third try.  I also won some new gloves 🙂

Zul’Aman, newly returned to the game, was our next port of call.. for now this is still a raid, but will become a Heroic dungeon somewhere down the line.

The guys gave me all the Amani Hex Sticks we found, with a mention of a pet being involved. 😀

These are for using them on frogs; this removes a hex and turns the frogs back into people, who then drop a box with loot, or are vendors for random items.  Eventually I hit the right frog.. and won Mojo, who rushed at me and jumped into my pocket.. I thought I was being attacked! 😀

The group found him irresistable.. kissing Mojo turns the player into a frog!  When you kiss him, he whispers things to you as well.. 😉

Finishing Zul’Aman was no problem for our overpowered group..

After Zul’Aman, we headed for Serpentshrine Cavern, a raid in the underwater Coilfang Reservoir.

Heading into this raid, I was shown the Tier 5 Priest Gear, and told I had to roll on it.  It is a fairly nice set, so I decided I would collect it.. and maybe see if we can catch anyone else out in PuGs..

Last week we met an idiot in a PuG.. he saw our tank in old gear and quit without asking or even waiting to see if he would switch into something more up-to-date.  I’m now thinking about turning up to these groups in the nice looking Tier 5, or even in a simple dress.. this might prove a good way of getting rid of impatient, annoying type players right at the start 🙂

Anyway.. Serpentshrine Cavern!

I’d been here with a friend before Cataclysm, and I had remembered it being a little tougher.. we cleared the packs on the platforms fairly quickly.

In a very interesting twist, The Lurker Below has to be fished up from his pool before fighting him.  With an achievement up for grabs we rolled to see who would do it, and I won.  It took a few tries, but eventually I caught a big one..

The Lurker Below’s knockback was annoying, as it came from more than one of his abilities, I kept being caught by it.

Fathom-Lord Karathress managed to kill us on our first attempt, resulting in a rather long run back across the water and down into Coilfang Reservoir.  Eventually we got the better of him.. and moved on to Morogrim Tidewalker.  His mechanics included teleporting us into the waterfalls, where we were temporarily incapacitated before being dropped and incurring falling damage.   This meant I had a bit more of a challenge in healing, so I enjoyed this fight most.

After killing all the bosses, an impressive looking bridge is lowered to get to the final boss, Lady Vashj.

We had no problems the first phase, which was all about damage, but in the second phase she becomes immune, with her shield generated at four points on the platform.  To knock out the shield we had to get Tainted Cores from Tainted Elementals which appear in the water around the platform.. the interesting mechanic here was that once you have a Tainted Core you are unable to move, so you have to throw the Core to the next person, who throws it to the next..

However, Enchanted Elementals continually appear and head for Lady Vashj, and need to be killed as they give her a power boost.. they weren’t hard to kill alone, but there were also Coilfang Elites, which took a bit more to put down, and then the Striders, who used Panic and disrupted us far too much.

We decided that four people wasn’t enough, so put this off for another night..

Critter Gitter!

A friend just sent me some Critter Bites.. which allows me to turn critters into temporary pets!

I started grabbing all the critters I could find around Orgrimmar, until not only did I have the achievement “Critter Gitter”, I also had a large following of dung beetles, toads and other small critters.. wheeee! 🙂

Personal World Destroyer

Engineering pet.. fortunately – or unfortunately, depending on your outlook – unable to actually destroy the world 😉

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 🙂

Midsummer Fire Festival

It’s the first time I’ve seen a holiday event in WoW, and I have to say it was much more of a big thing than I’d have expected.

The first I knew of it, we had been hit with a buff seemingly out of nowhere, and at first I was looking around for a random other player who might have done it.

So we began visiting bonfires – including the Alliance’s bonfires, which we of course chose to desecrate.  This resulted in us being flagged for PvP, and in one instance, being chased by some guys who were a lot higher level.  I managed to get away, but they killed poor Vorlak 😉

There are tokens to be won for completing various quests, some more involved, and some rather more ‘fun’ tasks, such as torch tossing and torch catching!  I found throwing the torches onto the required targets fairly easy to do, but throwing and catching a torch was much more difficult, especially with other people’s thrown torches in the air too.

The tokens can be redeemed for various goodies, the most expensive of which is a small pet, the Captured Flame.
The festival is running for another two weeks, so I’m hoping I can get enough tokens together for this..

In the meantime, we’re on a mission to collect another pet, the Mechanical Chicken!  We’ve rescued two OOX homing robots so far, and have one more to go!