Alpha avoidance

It's hard to keep a good balance when it comes to being informed about the alpha. I don't want to be completely out of the loop, as that can result in uninformed decisions you later regret, but I also don't want to spoil the game for the playing once it arrives. It's hard because that's all people are talking about - perfectly understandable, but I've already read or seen a couple of things I wish I hadn't. If I need to choose between one of two extremes on Legion alpha/beta, I'm starting to lean towards crawling under a rock for a while. I've got other things to focus on without getting caught up in all the speculation and worry that accompanies an alpha, and that will allow me to enjoy exploring the game live, even if that makes me a slow leveller.

I'm glad to say that I've now got all of the Draenor rare spawn mounts - completed over 4 weeks with Poundfist obviously taking the longest. I also got the Ashes of A'lar from Tempest Keep (43 kills in WoD, unsure beforehand as I wasn't tracking. Estimate 120 total). The guild has been doing Highmaul and BRF achievement and mythic runs, whilst raiding Mythic HFC 2 hours a week, getting the first 3 down. I've been doing a lot of Ashran again, finishing the 2000 bloody coins achievement, and I started doing nemesis a second time (this time on my main) to help out others and have been sucked into completing it again.

But what I've been doing more than anything is levelling pets. This has seen me go from 238th to 72nd on wowprogress pet score, although it doesn't update reliably so I've started using warcraftpets.com instead. I've still a lot to go, but after seeing how effective it is to level during pet bonus week, I'm doing the bare minimum until that comes around again (17th Feb) so I don't burn out. I'll post a follow up explaining my circuit.

It's also a good time to be levelling alts. Not that I really need more alts or that I'm enjoying the levelling process, both topics I should write about. But I took a self-RAF during the sale so I'm taking advantage of it. There's always reasons cropping up to have alts on the opposite faction/another server/another account.

Keeping busy

On the one hand there's a whole heap of games I've never touched that I feel I should. On the other there's so much I want to get done in WoW, which a reduced raid schedule will allow. I can sort of do both, by rarespawn mount camping in the background.

Whilst on the home stretch of 100 arena wins, I was flying around Frostfire mining between games, and chanced upon the portal for the Voidtalon of the Dark Star. No camping required for that one - sweet. Since then I've also got the Swift Breezestrider from Pathrunner in SMV, but unfortunately I foresee a lot of camping in my future if I want to find Poundfist. I've already experienced 2 occasions where people kill these rare mobs in 10 seconds without announcing or waiting.

For now I persist with the garrison mine and herb garden as much as possible, because I've yet to see the Nightshade Sproutling and Ore Eater drop. They can be bought for 2-3k on the AH, but I am persisting, as a test of my luck but also because of the steady income.

My addon to track kill numbers but was giving confusingly low numbers for the Disturbed Podling until I realised there are actually 7 different mobs with that name, each for a different herb type. In total I've killed 633 of them. There's only one Goren Protector from mines, and I've killed 246 of them. At some point though I'll call it quits on these just as I did with the salvage yard.

I've been looking out for Blackfang claw groups whenever I can, for I Came, I Clawed, I Conquered and in turn, Rumble in the Jungle. A tank is necessary if you want to make any decent progress, but often the tank will either finish his rep or get tired/bored within 10 minutes, and the group dies as a result. End is in sight however - I'm currently at 4400/5000. Should only take another hour or two.

Archaeology... I am attempting to make progress, currently sitting at 35/49 pristines. Cymre recently posted stats on how many solves she needed to completion - a total of 1072 for Draenor. I've only done 245 - this completely demotivates me. Seems like too much effort for 70 achievement points.

Similarly for Pandaria, Cymre needed 1230 solves. I have done 782, and am only missing 5 normal and 1 Pristine solve. Working on this can feel like the biggest waste of time, because you get nothing out of it otherwise.

I am trying to manage archaeology motivation by aiming for 5 crates a day, so I can always complete an archaeology mission. This usually means only 3 or 4 dig sites, but at that rate, I won't be done by Legion unless I can do it every day.

I'm finding motivation for battle pets a lot easier currently. Wowprogress pet battle rankings helps, I'm currently sitting at 238th realm, which feels about right, but I'd like to be a lot higher so I'm putting more effort into it lately. Still only 382/2000 battles done in Draenor, however.

I also got my warlock to 100, which makes 7 at max level. This was primarily to help establish income on a 2nd server, to go towards TCG pet and mount purchases. I haven't pre-ordered Legion, yet, but there's another one there if I need it.

Finally, the new arena season and PvP gear has made Ashran relevant for me again. I've been playing BM since 6.1 but it feels weak in large scale combat, even with the Ancient Artifact. Not sure whether I want to go back to Survival, or try Marksman for the first time in many years. 1630/2000 bloody coins, I would love to finish this before Legion which will allow me to switch back to my shaman if, hopefully, elemental is in a better place then.

Tol Barad mastered

When I came back in Mists, Tol Barad was one of the things I had to play catch up on. With the help of a couple of my guildies I got almost all of the Master of Tol Barad meta completed. Fortunately, unlike Wintergrasp, the meta only requires 25 wins and not 100 (my GM is still trying to get WG completed). However the Tol Barad Saboteur achievement appeared bugged, as I couldn't get credit for killing siege engines no matter how I did it, and comments on Wowhead confirmed the problem, so I abandoned it for the time.

I've recently headed back to TB by myself to finish it off, and there is basically no-one there now. I've seen the odd horde player but only once encountered any alliance resistance. So to get that last achievement I had to get creative, using my alliance rogue.

Firstly, horde had to be defending. To pilot a siege engine, you need an honorable kill, so I had to get my rogue to kill my shaman. There were a couple of hurdles of course:

1. They are both on the same account so I had to work around timeouts to get the hk.
2. My rogue was fresh and not well geared so couldn't kill my shaman before it timed out.
3. Whenever you enter/relog, you get ported to either the entrance or the centre tower depending on whether you are attacking or defending. And you lose the buff gained to pilot siege engines when you switch over.

So the process went like this:

1. On shaman, run to entrance and take off all gear.
2. Alt F4 and log onto rogue quickly.
3. Kill shaman, pilot and position siege
4. Alt F4 and log onto shaman.
5. Resurrect, put gear back on, run to tower, pop cooldowns and kill siege.
6. Repeat.

The first time I did this I only managed 2 siege kills before TB completed. However on subsequent tries I positioned 2 sieges each time, and allowed a tower to be killed to get an extra 5 minutes. This allowed me to get at least 5 siege kills per TB, and I was done in no time.

I was not done with the dailies however. There are a lot of goodies to buy using the Tol Barad Commendation currency: 2 mounts, 2 pets, a toy, a battle standard and a tabard. 745 commendations if you wanted everything today.

Unfortunately before my guild died in Cata, I'm pretty sure I bought a Stump of Time for 125, which in hindsight was not well spent. But, the battle standard is no longer useful, the tabard isn't really useful given TB's proximity to Orgrimmar via portal, and my good friend gave me a Fox Kit, which eased the burden a lot.

The Fox Kit was originally not available on the vendor, only on an extremely low drop chance from killing foxes around the island. You can still get them as drops, as I got into the habit of killing any foxes I saw and was lucky enough to get a second one recently.

I'm glad to say I've finally finished, getting the last item I needed on Tuesday. It was a bit of a chore, but it's mainly because it is irrelevant and empty - there are things to like about the place when looking at some of the issues Ashran is having, and seeing good old content sit dormant is disappointing. These are topics for another day though.

Invincible

Earlier this year, one of my priorities was to get Shadowmourne on my death knight, and because my mind was already focused on that, I'd go in and kill the Lich King on my other max level characters as well, for a chance at the mount. But once I got Shadowmourne, other priorities took over and I stopped doing it for the most part.

But after reading a tip from Big Bear Butt I figured I'd take in a couple of characters that I ordinarily wouldn't clear the whole instance with as it'd be too slow - my moonkin (that was my WoD free boost) and my 92 warlock. I hadn't played my lock for some time - it has been sitting dormant waiting for flying so I can level it - but figured I could stumble my way to a kill.

The first attempt, I forgot to dismiss my demon pet, and didn't set up a demonic circle of course, so I got dropped off the edge by a valkyr. It was pretty slow going, as I tried to remember what buttons to press and deal with all the adds I ignore completely on my geared 100s, but eventually he went down and in addition to the achievements for killing him, there it was. Invincible's Reins.

It's not like it was my first kill ever, but there was some amazement and satisfaction at getting it on my first kill on that character. Unfortunately my lock is over on Barthilas and it was about midnight, so no-one was on to see it happen. But I quickly jumped back onto my shaman to check it out.

Now normally, by the time I've farmed the heck out of a place, using the mount is actually secondary to not having to run the instance again. For instance, after getting Mimiron's Head, I started using it just for the jealousy factor, but it didn't suit my cow much and the noises it makes are annoying, so I quickly put it away. But despite the inevitable tauren clipping issues, Invincible has gone straight into my favourite mounts list.

It's no longer really prestigious - there were a stream of people flying into ICC solo, and, well, if my lock can kill it without a struggle, anyone can. But it looks great, is recognisable, pleasant to ride around on, and I can cross ICC off my to do list. Ohh, how good is this? (reference)