September 2016 - Page 3 of 6 - Tales of the Aggronaut

Panda Hero

September 20, 2016 by Belghast

Yesterday I talked about my journey from bad engineer to not so bad engineer, but that was not at all the only thing I accomplished this weekend. For some time I had been sitting at three achievements from completing my Glory of the Pandaria Hero meta achievement and obtaining the purty mount you see in the screenshot above. I guess leading with a screenshot pretty much kills any suspense, but I am going to talk about this regardless. I actually accomplished most of this during my periods of playing Pandaria back in the day, but for whatever reason I simply was not with the group when they completed Rattle No More, Seeds of Doubt, and I never messed with the super annoying Polyformic Acid Science. What ultimately jogged my memory is that I wound up getting an enchanting quest requiring me to go gather up various components… two of which were located in Scholomance and Stonecore which meant me going to the respective areas and soloing a dungeon. It was during this process that I got one of the empty vials, and remembered how the whole Polyformic Acid thing worked. As a result I managed to do five of the six kills needed for that achievement during a single 60 minute charge… before using the empty vial and removing it. What I did not remember is that apparently when you remove and reapply a charge… it gives you a fresh 60 minute buff and not a partial buff based on what the previous timer was when you last stowed it. From there the actual chore of doing the last two achievements was minimal because with level 110 gear things just sort of fall over. However regardless I now have one more mount to add to my collection. The thing is I am in similar places on most of the other “Dungeon Hero” achievements because for whatever reason I never really prioritized them. I have never been the achievement hunter that Thalen or Rylacus was… but maybe it is time to start changing that.

As far as last night went, I spent most of it working on questing Exeter my Draenei Tankadin. I did not realize what a difference harvesting makes to the total amount of experience you can squeeze out of a zone. Belghast had no harvesting skill, but instead a double crafting combo of engineer and enchanting. As a result it took me all five zones to be able to reach 110, or at least a fraction of the last zone for me which was Highmountain. On Exeter however I have done nothing but complete Azuna my first zone… and I am sitting at 104 and roughly half of the way to 105. I’ve run zero dungeons, and the only real difference is that I am harvesting every ore node I happen across. However at 900 xp or so a pop those nodes I guess add up, as does the fact that I have plenty of rested experience since I am only playing him a few times a week right now. The push however is to get to 109 quickly so that I can have another character to start running the upcoming Coren Direbrew fight that comes with Brewfest… that should start showing up after the downtime today. Now however is the point at which I am going to ascend my soapbox. One of the things that the Legion pre-event showed off is just how damned well the content scaling works, and how much more enjoyable an event can be when you allow players of all levels to complete it. Direbrew has never really been a difficult fight and honestly most of the time you could complete it without a tank in previous years. It just feels odd that in an expansion driven by scaling of content, that they would not also update this event to use it.

As much as I am loving this expansion, there are a lot of things that still make me wonder. For example Stormheim is this amazing zone… so long as you completely ignore any factional crap that happens in it. This is really the expansion of two stories happening at once… a faction tale of red versus blue that feels grossly outdated, and deep and rich zone specific tales that feel fresh and new. I realize they probably did not have time to do everything in this expansion and update Brewfest… so they instead simply bumped up the item levels a bit and moved on. However I feel like at some point they really need to do an update pass on all of these seasonal fights to bring them in line with the newest tech. Imagine how much cooler it would be if anyone in the game could participate on all of their characters. Right now this event feels like it is setting an artificial deadline on when we should have been leveled by in order to keep from missing out. Then there is the issue of the fact that I am pulling 840/850 items from World Quests and the face value of the Direbrew trinkets is only 810… something that I am hoping can easily War and Titan forge up in level. In any case I will be doing this event every day on Belghast, and attempting to get my nearest character up to the appropriate level range of 109 so that I can get multiple characters trying to farm goodies. If nothing else I need to have more characters at the level cap since this does not appear to be something they are going to scale… because I still am chasing that ever damned elusive Headless Horseman mount.

Bad Engineer

September 19, 2016 by Belghast

This weekend was a weekend in many ways about finishing things that I left unresolved for years. Over the course of the weekend I managed to get in several heroic runs of Legion content. During Vault of the Wardens… we wiped a lot. So much so that by the end of the run we were all showing yellow on our paper doll armor portraits. It was around this time that I saw some text that I dread “Does anyone have a Jeeves?”. This was quickly followed up by a statement from my friend Grace, “Hey Bel, You are an Engineer right?”. To which I have to hang my head in shame every time this conversation comes up, because I am a failure as an engineer. The biggest problem that I have had is the fact that my warrior is the completely screwball combination of Enchanter and Engineer. Its like I chose the two worst things to level and slapped them on the same character. The truth is… I used to be the even stranger profession for a warrior of tailor. When I created this character I had no bag makers, so I decided to remedy that problem. Then during Burning Crusade I could not get a helmet to drop period. I went through all of Tier 5 and almost all of Tier 6 still wearing my Tier 4 helmet. Over the course of a weekend I decided to fix that, dropped tailoring, and power leveled my engineer from zero to the then level cap… and crafted myself a t6 equivalent helm. The very next week… a helm dropped for me.

From that point onwards I have been a shitty engineer, always lagging behind and never quite having all of the toys that I should for my profession. During Wrath of the Lich King I swapped mains and instead focused on Belgrave my Deathknight. So while I farmed the Jeeves pattern, I never actually got around to gathering the materials to craft it, which even at that time were pretty insane. This weekend during the AggroChat Podcast, I decided to remedy the failure and set forth to farm all of the materials to craft my Jeeves. The real credit for this process goes to the wowhead user Ketho for posting a breakout of the materials which made me realize this was actually doable. So during the podcast I farmed the following list of items…

6 – Copper Ore
32 – Thorium Ore
32 – Fel Iron Ore
32 – Adamantite Ore
4 – Khorium Ore
60 – Cobalt Ore
80 – Saronite Ore
48 – Titanium Ore
2 – Essense of Fire
2 – Primal Fire
8 – Eternal Fire
8 – Eternal Earth
8 – Eternal Shadow
2 – King’s Amber

Looking at the list now it seems even more like madness but I set forth to gather it up while we talked on the podcast. The first goal was Thorium ore, which I set forth to farming in Winterspring which I could get to easy enough through Hyjal. Remember I am not a miner on my actual engineer so instead for this job I grabbed Tallow my Jewelcrafting/Mining Shaman. This part went super quickly, and I decided to drop by Darkshore to pick up a few copper nodes to be done with the “Vanilla” section of the list. From there I took the Stormwind Mage’s Guild port to Hellfire Peninsula and farmed anything I happened across on my way to Zangarmarsh. I remember spending hours running/flying circles around Zangarmarsh farming Fel Iron and Adamantite… so I focused on this zone until I neared enough Fel Iron. From there I took the exit from Zangar to Nagrand and flew a path around that zone until I finally gathered the Adamantite I needed. I lucked out and found just enough Khorium while farming so I moved on to Northrend, where I flew circles around Grizzly Hills until I had gathered up enough Cobalt. Similarly to Zangarmarsh, I spent most of my Wrath farming time in Sholazar Basin so I quickly gathered up the requisite amount of Saronite I needed there. Lastly for Northrend was flying a bunch of circles around Icecrown trying to find Titanium. Here is the point where I cheat a little and tell you all that I had a handful of bars sitting in the bank left over from something so I didn’t really need that much to continue onwards.

The challenge was getting enough elemental stuff to create the Eternals and the Primals. Before leaving Nagrand I slaughtered a bunch of fire elementals at the elemental plateau which gave me enough to create the two primal fires. While mining I got more than enough Earth and Shadow, which left me in a similar position needing fire. I made an attempt at Wintergrasp but Horde was currently holding it, which means the elementals there have a greatly reduced drop rate. This is the point at which I went to the wowhead and found that apparently there is a lesser known farm spot in Storm Peaks. There is a cave full of mobs called Wailing Winds that are nearly instant respawn and have a pretty decent drop rate for the fire. So after about fifteen minutes of killing them I managed to gather up the mats to do my Eternal Fire. This left one last component… the King’s Amber which I initially thought I would simply buy off the auction house. We had none available, and after looking at how I might actually get my hands on some… it seemed like it was going to be the part of this equation that killed me. I instead restored to trying to transmute them… which required 2 Autumn’s Glow that caused me to once again fly some more around Sholazar Basin and this time prospect it hoping for the gem I needed. I transferred the materials to my alchemist… and then was disappointed that apparently old world transmutes still incur the once a day timer.

It was around this time when Thalen told me he would be re-upping his account and was certain that he probably had the needed gem sitting in a bank somewhere. We then played this game… of him trying to remember who was his jewelcrafter. Thalen has been gone from World of Warcraft since about halfway through Pandaria, meaning he has slept several times since then. When he finally landed on the right character, he didn’t have the gem… but instead said he could swap to his alchemist and do a transmute. So we played a similar game of trying to figure out which character was his alchemist. Finally we got the mats and I mailed everything to Belghast to start crafting the sub components. This is the point at which I realized that I apparently NEVER picked up the recipe for the original Repair Bot on this character from Blackrock Depths. Prior to Belghast I had another engineer, and I knew that I had grabbed it on that character, but I guess mentally I transposed that event to happening on my current engineer. I hopped on a mount and flew over to Blackrock Depths, ran in quickly… got the pattern and returned once more to the Dwarven Quarter in Stormwind where I finally combined everything into my shiny new Jeeves. I had enough mats left over to craft a Moll-E as well. It was a whirlwind of farming but during the three hours or so associated with the podcast and me doing post podcast editing I am now less of an engineering failure.

Operation Hey Folks

September 16, 2016 by Belghast

For the last week and some change, I have been running at least one dungeon a night. Often time I am queuing with less than a full party. This is a situation that generally causes me great anxiety, because I like going into a group knowing that folks I know… outnumber the folks I don’t know. I said awhile back that I have been trying to force myself to be more cordial in dungeons. As a result I have adopted my common “Hey Folks” and “How Goes?” greetings. My friend Grace that I am often dungeoning with has been doing the same. Mostly we had a discussion awhile back about how this is the common expected behavior in Final Fantasy XIV, and that maybe if we attempted to treat World of Warcraft the same we might get similar results. Folks in FFXIV are largely charming and willing to help you sort out mechanics that you might not understand, all just because you spoke up and said you were new to a dungeon. My experience in the past of WoW has not been nearly that charitable, but I was willing to give it a shot either way. The awesome thing about going in with the majority of a party… it means the moment someone resorts to toxic behavior you can punt them quickly. All in all I have to say I continue to be pleased at just how well this is going, even in Heroics. If you present a friendly face, more often than not it has been met with a similarly friendly response.

Last night we had someone drop shortly after introductions… which I am hoping was just a case of them getting disconnected or being needed elsewhere. However others in the party not only were cheery but performed admirably. At the end of the dungeon run we took time to praise the Deathknight for example who did an amazing job of pull casters into the group, and pulled off a clutch rez when our healer inadvertently stood in some “bad”. All of this is really making me wish that World of Warcraft would adopt a commendation system similar to Final Fantasy XIV. I think a lot of that culture is based on the fact that at the end of a dungeon run, each player gets a single commendation that they can give to someone in their party. There is the additional caveat that you cannot give commendations to members of your own guild, meaning you have to be giving random strangers these nods. To make it something that folks are actually interested in receiving there are a number of achievements based on the number of commendations you have, and some of the rewards are things like mounts, titles and cosmetic items. Basically the system would port perfectly to World of Warcraft random dungeons, and give some additional reinforcement of good behavior. Last night for example I greatly wished I had the ability to heap tangible praise on this Deathknight for doing a pretty amazing job all around. Even the mage that ultimately replaced the dropped Demon Hunter, was deserving of commendations because for the most part everyone “mechanic’d” like a pro.

Other than dungeons, last night I spent most of my time attempting to catch up in Suramar. I had been lagging behind horribly in the questing there, namely when it comes to unlocking things in the actual city proper. I am not a huge fan of stealth mechanics, and it is foreign to me to attempt to sneak around. A huge part of me wants to simply fight my way from one side of the city to the other… but the sheer mob density here makes that not really a viable option. Similarly I don’t believe a lot of the quests are actually open to you unless you are wearing the illusion. As Tam and I have commented… Suramar is like being a High Elf Enchanter in Neriak… for those who ever had that experience in the original Everquest. The illusion works most of the time, but occasionally there is someone all to happy to murder you. As you progress however you start to build little enclaves where you are more or less free to roam safely. Last nights grind was focused on getting far enough in to be able to start unlocking some of the lucrative world quests, one of which yesterday was an epic trinket. Before I went to bed last night I managed to unlock the dinosaur quest… which is truly amazing and with it the trinket world quest. Nothing quite as fun as riding along on the back of a devilsaur and gobbling up demons and evil elves.

Accidentally Epic’d

September 15, 2016 by Belghast

I figured this screenshot was appropriate this morning because this if anything else is how I feel. Ragweed is my direst of dire enemies. It has always been a problem for me and continues to be this day. I feel like I am a bit of a walking zombie and I didn’t really know completely why until I watched the forecast this morning. Sure enough ragweed pollen is spiking like mad right now, which explains the constant congestion, watery eyes… and general inability to breathe. On a day like today all I really want to do is to either go back to bed and hide from the world, or snuggle up in a cocoon on the sofa playing video games. The problem with this plan however is that our human resources department is being super bizarre with sick leave. I have almost 400 hours of sick time built up over the years… yet they tend to freak out any time someone actually uses some. What is the point of giving us sick leave… especially in the hundreds of hours territory while being stingy with actually getting to use it. So instead of chilling out on a day like today when I am not really a fully functional human being… I am going to shamble in my undead state to the office and mash keys with confused fingers.

One the WoW front however, as of last night I am missing one ring and a belt from being completely purple once more. The strange thing about this process has been that I didn’t really do anything super intentional to get there. Through unlocking my class hall, completely its mission… and then spending order resources to upgrade items all the way to 840 I got a big chunk of the way there. From there it has simply been doing any items that were upgrades each day from the world quests. The end result has been the least grindy gearing process I have ever gone through. I just played the game and did the things I enjoyed and before I knew it I was sitting there at 838, a reasonable level to do just about anything available in the game right now. The truth is I have only actually run two dungeons in heroic, and while I have done a slew of normal dungeons they were always for some other purpose than just grinding. Either I needed something for a quest or a friend of mine did… and we ventured forth and had a grand romp inside. It has been amazing just how painless and seamless this entire gearing process has felt. For a long time I have given credit to the way the catch up mechanics felt in Final Fantasy XIV, but even there you had to have a focus on actually running content to get gear. This time around it feels like I just did the things I would have done normally… and accidentally got epic’d.