Month: November 2010

The Shattering

This past week was Thanksgiving so I didn’t do much gaming, which means that it was terrible timing for me for the shattering to happen. (The shattering is the event leading up to the next WoW expansion, which comes out December 7th). I’ve avoided posting about WoW for this long despite how much I play, but I figured this event (and the associated changes) was worth a post.

I had several things left to do before the shattering changed the world and made them impossible/more difficult, but I did manage to finish the ones that I was most worried about. I finally got my ZG tiger mount (after farming for over a year and a half) a week and a half before the shattering removed ZG, but I didn’t manage to take the time to use all the coins and bijous that I have in my alt-guild bank (I intended to get another character exalted with the Zandalar Tribe, but since my main is exalted I wasn’t too worried about it). I also managed to finish farming Bloodsail Buccaneer exalted on November 16th, but I was about 2k rep short of repairing my Booty Bay rep to exalted (the rest of Steamwheedle was exalted) when Knot (of the Free Knot repeatable quest) was removed by the shattering.

Besides changing the world the shattering also updated the achievements to include the Cataclysm achievements, updated the old world quest achievements, and generally reorganized a few things. I went from having every achievement category except pvp and raids (and feat of strength of course) completed to only having world events completed. Only world events can currently be completed due to Cataclysm not being out yet, but most completed quests from classic got wiped and replaced by new versions (or completely new quests), so despite the fact that I’ve got loremaster for both classic continents I now don’t have the individual zone complete achievements (which are new).

Since the quest achievements are the main ones that I can work on before cata (I still have no great desire to pvp for what I lack there or put together achievement raids) I’m working on those. It’s pretty much just a time sink since they mostly did a good job on the questing flow, but I have gotten stuck a couple times where I couldn’t find the last quests I needed (temporarily at 92/100 in azshara, gave up looking in ashenvale at 74/80). They really did a good job on a number of the new quests. My favorite so far was the goat blaster in Badlands for pure entertainment (launching the goat infestation off the cliffs surrounding the town), and the final quests in Stonetalon Mountains were my favorite for lore.

Other new achievements that can be worked on include “loot x gold”, the new fishing achievements and daily quests, and the new cooking daily quests. The achievement for looting 100k gold would take some serious raid farming (if I try to do that the same way I did 25k), or I can just give it time and assume that everything in cata will drop more gold to speed it up (I’m at 64k since WotLK came out, so I should have it easily within 2 years without trying if I can be that patient). The cooking quests should be done for the tokens more than the achievement since cata recipes can be bought now with those tokens. Hopefully I’ll have all the ones I need to level cooking before cata is out, but I never got in beta and haven’t looked too closely at them yet to figure out which ones I’ll level with. Realm first max cook would be wonderful, but not likely to happen since I’ll be focused on first druid to 85. Fishing dailies don’t give a token type reward, but perhaps there’s something in the bag it gives you that’s worth trying to farm for. I’m just doing that for the achievement currently, but I’m also trying for the “fish up every type of fish” achievements as far as I can get without going to cata zones.

Since Booty Bay and Bloodsail Buccaneers are opposing factions most things that give rep for one take away from the other. Despite the fact that they made Bloodsail rep easier to get with the shattering I’ve been careful not to damage it. I was very pleased to discover that the Booty Bay quests in Swamp of Sorrows had no impact on rep, and that the Gadgetzan quests in Badlands increased all Steamwheedle rep without damaging Bloodsail. I was doing all the questionable quests on my paladin first to see what the rep would do (I don’t trust wowhead or the other sites to be accurate yet), which meant those zones took a good bit longer than just the quest counter would indicate. I have had to skip quests in southern Stranglethorn that wanted me to go kill Bloodsail pirates, and I didn’t even bother going to Booty Bay since alot of their quests were directly against the Bloodsail and would impact that rep if anything does. That zone can wait till I’ve finished the rest of the achievements, which will probably be sometime after Cata comes out.

Besides quests I intend to have rep for the Bilgewater Cartel (the new horde faction) to exalted before Cataclysm. With the introduction of city tabards for rep (and the availability of the goblin tabard before the goblin race is available) that will be easy to do in heroic dungeons, but there were a bunch of changes around a month ago so my druid is only feral dps currently. Since the queue time is terrible for dps I used to queue as a tank, but I haven’t set up that spec or my action bars for it yet and the changes are enough that I’ll have to think about it (probably not the spec, but the rotation and action bars for sure). I’m still sub-optimal as dps (though far above the people I was grouped thanks to my gear) between being used to solo questing and not experienced enough with the changes to be able to maintain an optimal rotation without thinking about it. It also doesn’t help that even mobs in heroics die so fast now that combo points are hard to use, but some other classes are affected negatively by quick target switching too.

Post-Thanksgiving Report

My family left for Texas last night. As expected many things ended up in different places than where I put them, but I’ve been able to find pretty much everything I looked for so far. Despite how nice my closet and pantry look when organized I very much doubt it will last. The only thing I couldn’t find was a clean bowl last night. It turns out bowls get used much faster by four people than by one, so I loaded the dishwasher and ate my jello desert off a plate.

While my mom was here I got her to make a cushion for Talore for my desk. It covers the corner of the desk, but has a notch for Talore’s cup of water and the squirt gun I use for discipline. All yesterday afternoon/evening Talore slept on the new pillow, and a good bit of today too, so it’s clearly appreciated.

The roomba died again today. It stopped in the middle of the room Tuesday or Wednesday when I forgot to cancel the schedule and we weren’t here, but it had also picked up a large portion of Talore’s tissue paper so I hoped that was the cause. Apparently cat hair managed to build up in the gear box to the point of jamming it again (not at all surprising). I took it apart and cleaned it before supper, then some time later started putting it all back together. After I’d put together the entire brush module I realized that I had 6 extra screws from where I’d fitted the gear box back together before I ate and didn’t realize the cover wasn’t fastened down when I got back to it. It’s all back together now and seems to be in working order, but the vacuum sometimes cuts out, so I’ll probably clean the contacts on that sometime soon.

Since I didn’t want the roomba trying to eat the things that were left on the floor while my family was here it was deactivated pretty much the entire week. That meant that kitty litter got tracked into the kitchen and wasn’t cleaned up automatically, and my mom couldn’t stand that. She got Talore a fluffly bath mat to go in front of the litter box. The first time Talore stepped on it she decided she didn’t want to walk across it and just jumped (scattering litter a bit farther than usual) but now she seems used to it and it’s doing quite a good job of catching litter (meaning it has plenty of litter on it, not that it’s 100% successful in stopping it from getting tracked into the kitchen). The problem right now is that it’s too thick for the roomba to roll over really easily, and it’s not heavy/stiff enough to prevent the roomba from just smashing it against the litter boxes. Putting the roomba in the middle of it works, but I’ll probably try taping the corners down or something.

The Bearded One

Last Saturday night my parents got here from Texas. When I heard my Dad coming up the steps I shut Talore in the bedroom so she wouldn’t get out while we unloaded. After we were all inside I opened the door to the bedroom to see that Talore was a bit spooked. I’m guessing that shutting her in the bedroom made her suspicious of who could be here, then when she saw my Dad (who’s beard is similar to the maintenance guy who tested the smoke detector and installed the carbon monoxide detector) her fears were confirmed, because clearly the bearded one is not to be trusted.

Her tail was puffed up to about three times it’s usual diameter, but as far as I could see that was the only part that puffed up to look bigger. On the other hand, my Mom’s first comment was about how big she is so perhaps I just didn’t notice. It took a decent portion of the evening for Talore to finally warm up to my dad (carrying her close to Dad was not productive). Eventually with Dad lying on the floor with his arm out she walked close enough for him to rub her head. She also wasn’t at all bothered by who it was in the middle of the night when she apparently walked over him.

It’s entertaining to have company over and see Talore reacting to all the usual things except with someone else triggering them. The main one is that when the shower stops she runs over and sits down outside the door. I knew she always met me there when I get out of the bathroom in the morning but I could never tell if she sat there the entire time. She also follows Mom around in the kitchen just like she does to me.

We went to Grand Junction to visit my cousin and her family for a couple days, and I didn’t think Talore needed to be carted along, so we left her with extra food and water and a pair of clean litter boxes. I was somewhat worried about her the entire trip (having never left her for nearly that long before), but when we got back Talore was just glad to see us and well rested (she kept waking me up all night). She hadn’t even finished off the food I left for her, though she did track litter all through the kitchen. To try to avoid a repeat of last night we’ve been trying to keep her from napping today. I think we pretty much kept her awake, but she did start watching us suspiciously when she got away and went to lie down.

While we were in Grand Junction we went over to Fruita to see the statue of Mike the headless chicken: