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World of Warcraft

Totenkindly

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I've been slowly dragging my undead Rogue up level 120 -- I kinda hate I missed out on that period where they had continuous timewalking dungeons so that I could've just grinded it out over a few days. I respecced back to Assassination from Outlaw and now am enjoying it much more now that I'm not playing the equivalent of DDR with my fingers trying to keep up with the insane amount of stuff going on with that spec.

My original rogue (alliance), I played to death in Pandaria when that expansion was current (so I was running Orgrimmar raids, etc., to grind for the cloak at the time) -- I was Subtlety spec and I felt kind of short-changed at the time, frustrated by the spec. I might have just been playing it wrong, but it felt complicated to me, that I had to play a lot more competently and do more complex things to be on par with rogues of other specs.

I haven't tried Subtlety in BFA and i have never played Outlaw, but my Horde rogue that I do something on weekly (including the CTA world event PVP) is Assassination -- it seems a lot easier and intuitive as the traditional rogue build, to me. I feel I can play competently without less effort than I was putting into Subtlety a few expansions ago.
 

Totenkindly

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As I am sitting here in the lonely Storm Peaks of Northrend camping the Time Lost Prototype Drake (sigh), in honor of Caesar the No-Drama Lllama I thought I would comment on the three new BFA alpaca mounts, each acquired via different means.

The alpaca mounts are what I'd consider "cute" mounts. They are each a different color. When you take a running bound with them, their legs splay out ridiculously but endearingly. Their special move (which is when you are stationary and hit the jump/spacebar command with a land mount OR a flying mount in a no-fly zone) is that they bound around in a circle bleating. It's kind of endearing, and I had fun the other night with an Alliance drone (I'm Horde) each of us on different alpaca mounts doing this in tandem with each other, despite being unable to communicate due to the faction language barrier. Silliness crosses the cultural boundary?


1. Mollie: Mollie is a brown alpaca and is simple to get but pure RDN. It's a drop from the Dunegorger Kraulok (in the middle of Vol'dun zone, Horde area), who is one of six BFA worldbosses who rotate weekly, so it's only up periodically. I heard the drop rate is abysmal as of early in 2020 but I do not know if it was changed. Fortunately, I got super-lucky, I guess: I did not even realize the dunegorger had a mount drop, heard about this late in BFA, and the first week he was up after that I ran all ten of my 120's against him and picked up the drop on my tenth (and last) try. Happy trails.

Mollie.jpg

Photo Courtesy of Brysse, my BE Disc priest

2. The Elusive Quickhoof: This second alpaca is black/grey and also is found in Vol'dun, but it's on a 2-8 hour timer I believe, and also needs greens (just 1 -- the Seaside Leafy Greens Mix) that you can most easily buy from the innkeeper at the Tortollan area in northern Vol'dun, right near the "Make Lo Go" occasional WQ, although you apparently can buy it elsewhere as well. Take the flight path up, then turn left and run right over the campfire where the innkeeper is. The greens you need also serve as food for PCs. Carry the greens with you so you are always ready, considering at most you only have ten minutes and you might not know how long the alpaca has been up and the zone takes two minutes to fly across.

While an add-on will show you the typical spawn points of the QH (who is only up for exactly ten minutes at a time), the easiest way aside from a lucky break is to search for a group with one of the words "elusive" or "quick" or "alpaca" in it, while in Vol'dun. Typically groups will provide one-person coverage for as many camp points as possible, and then when it appears, the lucky winner will announce it and everyone will immediately flock to that spawn point. When you arrive and pick your way through the crowd of new alpacas that others have already gotten (because everyone is testing out their new mount), simply click on the NPC, click the response to "feed it the greens" or whatever the gist is, and the mount drop appears in your backpack.

I lucked out with this one the other night. I joined a group who I thought had it up already, they didn't and they hadn't even announced their WM status; I quit that group but they were still around 2.5 hours later, so I joined and spent about 25 minutes with them doing a few other things, then camping a spot... and the darn thing appeared right before I quit for bed, so I got the mount with only a 25 minute camp. I also had moved my hearthstone location to a spot right in the middle of Vol'dun, so I could go there immediately if I saw a "Quickhoof up" quest when I was somewhere else, but here my planning had been unnecessary.

Note: War Mode matters for this one. Typically I set War Mode to on, and then if I see a quest in the Group panel saying it is up with WM Off, I can easily drop WM at any inn (usually where I am sitting at the time) and go. If you are in the wrong WM setting, you might see the raid members on your map, but you will not see the mount nor other raid members when you reach the location. You have to be in the right WM status.

Elusive-Quickhoof.jpgg

Photo Courtesy of Auewa, my Tauren Marksman Hunter


3. Springfur Alpaca: This is the most annoying of the three. You can spend 1 minute killing an Elite and if it fails, it fails. Meanwhile #2 is just a one-time thing and only takes one green. The Friendly Alpaca NPC that gives you daily quest appears in Uldum, WM still matters (and note there are weekly quests for PvP people who might be out killing folks in WM On), and you not only have to find 7 greens out in the wild (you can pick them without Herb skill but they're hard to see without it) but you have to essentially do the quest for 7 days (aka 7 times, since it is a daily-style quest) before you get the mount.

So it's like the other times. Get your 7 (or maybe more, to be safe) Gersahl Greens up front -- I think the best location to look is the southern central delta area at the bottom of your map, the plant is a water-edge plant -- then watch for and/or join a stakeout Raid, and feed the llama when it finally appears. Each time it will give you a little heart to let you know it likes you, but it won't give up the reins until the 7th time. I had been hoping I could just jam all 7 down its throat on one attempt, but se la vie...

I am three days in on this and have been fortunate enough to get those three feedings in with very little camping time spent. But it's still annoying as hell and I have four to go. Trying to get this before SL hits and people lose interest, as it is SO much easier with a raid of folks.

Note that this quest was fixed in Jan 2020 to allow the dailies to count in a Raid, unlike the majority of Daily WQs. So you can feed the alpaca while in a raid and still get credit now. (Check out their hotfix notes for Jan 22 if you are concerned.)

Mollie is more brown. The springfur alpaca is more blonde-ish.

update: I finished this on tuesday, after doing it 7 straight days. It must be on a short timer OR it is triggered to appear when enough spawn points are covered, because I really didn't have to wait more than 10 minutes in a raid group covering spawn points, typically, once a group was set up in Group Finder.

Springfur-Alpaca.jpg

Photo Courtesy of Saelki, my BE Ret Pally

Three alpaca mounts, designer colors, cute specials, and 3 closer to the desired "Lord of the Reins" achievement of 300 mounts once you get them. Whee.



Meanwhile, I'm still just sitting here on a ghostly moose in a small grove of trees in the Storm Peaks, right between two TLPD spawn points and where the four flight paths intersect. Haven't seen other players, but I wanted to hide in case someone else is trying to camp as well... so they won't be on their guard, lol. Luckily I have a lot of things to do on my laptop, so it's not a big deal to sit here in-game on my desktop computer in case something spawns... I don't think I could waste this much time on a REAL camp alone. (plus it's kind of amusing, this iron dwarf guard keeps walking up and peeking into the trees looking for trespassers, but I'm 120 level so he doesn't aggro. I prefer it to mean I'm being a sneaky elf and he's a dumb Gimli dwarf whose eye could be knocked out at 50 paces.)

The only long camp I have done before was for my Phosphorescent Stone Drake, over in Deepholm central. I did it maybe 12-18 months ago, long after most people were doing it, and had NPCScan loaded. I would just sit in the game while doing other things for about three days (only about 90-120 minutes a day) and got it on the third day. I don't know how people who do super-long camps fighting off other raids for a spawn do it, it just seems nuts to me.
 
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Stigmata

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Finally hit 120 on my Rogue. Now time to get a few pieces of gear and either quit or level one of my other alts up! Hooray!!!

giphy.gif
 

Totenkindly

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At least it's very fast to get "decent" gear if you know the game options. Scan the WQs for any upgrades -- and the quicker you upgrade to cutoff points (to the next iLevel of gear), the WQ gear then bumps up to the next level. The same principle applies to the Conquest point system doing the Assaults events (every 12 hours after the last one ends, a new 7-hour assault starts) -- 500 Conquest gets you a choice among 5-6 pieces of gladiator gear and also a drop in the weekly box. You can get up to 445 gear in the box and the WQs, up to 460 with the 500 conquest scale.

Sometimes the 4 dailies will give weapon, gear, or (for the Tortellans) rings/trickets.

I've only needed about a week max (if not less) to get up to a presentable 430-445 level from a n00b 120. Also, if you can get into Nazjatar and still have the crappy 266-300 gear, you can get 380+ gear from the Benthic click armor. (It's easiest once you get a well-geared 120 to just grab Benthic armor as quest rewards without any risk and mail them to alts.) Scaling that fast will quickly jump up your level given you in the WQs, which is a major reason to boost what you can so the WQ level boosts quickly. Heroic Stromgarde gives 430 drop, mythic 0 I have heard will drop 430, and then Heroic darkshore drops 460.

You can also create a few essences and trinkets up to 420 in Mechagon once you get the robot guy/vendor added.

you probably know all this anyway...


I think we're only two months out from the prepatch, it's apparently in PTR now. So the leveling is worth it, I don't know how high it is worth gearing...
 

Totenkindly

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I badly want to complete the 5-mask solo runs in Horrific Visions for Stormwind and Orgrimmar in order to get the title + other goodies. But I waited too long and am now under the gun to complete them. Only my ret pally is geared for this suitably, although I'm well-geared (+110 corrupt resistance on Level 15 cloak, i465).

1M and 2M runs are a joke, once you are familiar with the visions and are fairly well-geared. It's 3M and higher that need more planning. Adding the Daredevil mask (4x sanity damage from bosses/mini-bosses) and the Long Night mask (Sanity pool is cut in half for the entire run) are the ones that greatly reduce the margin of error you are allowed and make the runs hard. The Burned Bridge mask just takes a little time to get used to and adjusting how you move and where. The Pained mask (which adds an extra madness to each area) varies in difficulty based on the 2 madness combos you get for that week -- it's standardized on all runs for a particular week. Dark Imagination is a joke on its own (a faceless dude can materialize and come after you when you're 50% sanity or under), but could tip the balance depending on the timing -- maybe an extra add at a bad time or he interrupts a kbob or orb sanity heal that you needed.

I finished an Orgrimmar 3M two weeks back, and on the third try got a 4M Stormwind run last week, using Ghastly Ghoulash and K'bobs as my foods of choice and tinkering repeatedly with my build (talents, corruptions, and essences). I also started making Drums (for the Haste buff when up) and installing Weak Auras so I could tell when Gift of the Titans was likely to proc.

I have realized in the last day or two that the play style probably resembles high-level mythic dungeon runs the most, so if you're good at those, I think it will convert over. I have little experience with mythic runs. I found it hellish; I am geared very well for world content and blow through things (and most PvP players in world content) without any issue or fear of demise, but the higher-level masks demand much more specific focus and skill because you need to time well, react to environmental changes, and also use your cc's precisely as well as consumables and time your cd's. You also reasonably have to expect to be within about 3 seconds of blowing the run because you'll get sanity back for completing the mini-bosses anyway. You basically have to make high level runs knowing you will likely die but view them as a learning experience, and essentially memorize the entire scenario -- who is where, who needs stunned, what the specific danger points are each step of the way.

It's just frustrating to watch youtube streams of these dudes who make it all look easy, especially the guy who ran a 441 ret pally through on a 5M with half the gear and corruptions as well. Like, if he could do that, I should be able to do this -- but it is a struggle. I had trouble with a 3M run in Stormwind last week ago, then worked my butt off and completed the 4M... which was encouraging. After talking to players, some of them apparently did a lot of hard work back in the spring to do these runs, so succeeding on my third try at a 4M isn't bad.

(On the 4M runs: The 1st run, I got the whole way to Alleria, then completely blew the final fight -- it was just horrible playing on my point. Then I had a beautiful run on 2nd try until I got to the OT faceless mini-boss outside the final boss and the stupid NPC they give you aggroed another group. it's a trouble spot.... you really have to keep WAY back on one side of the courtyard, because if you don't clear that group first and try the mini-boss first, accidentally pulling them with the mini-boss is likely to kill you at 4-5M unless GotT procs. So I ran in there, NUKED the mini-boss, tried to tackle the group at the keys with the remnants of GotT... and the stupid NPC aggroed the other group and I just got murdered -- they burned my extra life, then proceeded to murder my regular life too with all the cc's and stuns and sanity damage going around. A great run went down the tubes unexpectedly in about 15 seconds, from an unexpected and bad pull. Third run, I did much better; but I still did not play Alleria well and kept getting sheeped.)

My one saving grace is that I was more familiar with Stormwind run, which is considered the harder of the two -- and I find it easier. In fact, I didn't have as much trouble with the 4M version with the layout and end boss of Mage Quarter, I find the Old Town section far more dangerous for me -- I think it's because of the specific dynamics, OT is tighter and you can more easily aggro something that will wipe you, and the end boss is a biatch with all the sanity drain from the boss and the Eyes.

Alleria is horrible for melee -- she's ranged, and basically keeps bathing the whole area at that mask level in shadow sanity drainers, fire bombs to kill your health, and then the random sanity attacks that you have to hide behind pillars for + the 4-sec polymorph that goes through cover so you have to approach her to interrupt anyway. It's a guerilla warfare game.
 

The Cat

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So I was wondering, if Minecraft and Terraria got into a protracted conflict, would that be a War of Worldcraft?:mellow:
 

Totenkindly

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So I accepted a Guild invite for my DH last week and it seems to be a small but active little guild, and everyone seems cool enough and actually chatty / open. So many guilds I've joined have no activity (I'm in them mostly for the quality of life perks that you get), but this one seems to have been helpful and friendly and not "clique-y" where the old-timers and a few n00bs they really like talk but they ignore everyone else.

They do 10-people raids and I saw they had one for tonight for the Waking City (the advanced/core members are doing Heroic, but this is a Normal level raid event specifically aimed at the n00bs, with core folks going.) So I thought WTH and signed up with my DH.

I have done no raiding in BFA.

This morning I read the first three boss fights and I'm just like WTF did I bite off this time? It seems every expansion Blizzard tries to amp up the complexity and craziness of each raid. Like, I haven't played these raids on LFG, and I barely can recall the mechanics for the first wing of THIS raid in Normal. I am gonna DIE so many times, this is so obnoxious. It's like being overweight / out of shape and trying to learn complex dance movies (and memorizing them) just by reading a few pages, not even knowing well how they work in experience. Each boss has 2-3 phases, and there's 2-3 things per phase that you have to memorize or the raid can wipe / you can die, some of them being where to go when and where to take damage so that the entire raid won't take as much damage. All while trying to cut things down as DPS.

Sure as heck couldn't tank these and to heal them would take a lot of memorization as well to know where the damage is coming from every second of the raid.

There are ten bosses in this raid. The first three are leaving me feeling ill.

I might have to load Discord for this. I have it, I just didn't connect to their server yet.
 

Stigmata

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At least it's very fast to get "decent" gear if you know the game options. Scan the WQs for any upgrades -- and the quicker you upgrade to cutoff points (to the next iLevel of gear), the WQ gear then bumps up to the next level. The same principle applies to the Conquest point system doing the Assaults events (every 12 hours after the last one ends, a new 7-hour assault starts) -- 500 Conquest gets you a choice among 5-6 pieces of gladiator gear and also a drop in the weekly box. You can get up to 445 gear in the box and the WQs, up to 460 with the 500 conquest scale.

Sometimes the 4 dailies will give weapon, gear, or (for the Tortellans) rings/trickets.

I've only needed about a week max (if not less) to get up to a presentable 430-445 level from a n00b 120. Also, if you can get into Nazjatar and still have the crappy 266-300 gear, you can get 380+ gear from the Benthic click armor. (It's easiest once you get a well-geared 120 to just grab Benthic armor as quest rewards without any risk and mail them to alts.) Scaling that fast will quickly jump up your level given you in the WQs, which is a major reason to boost what you can so the WQ level boosts quickly. Heroic Stromgarde gives 430 drop, mythic 0 I have heard will drop 430, and then Heroic darkshore drops 460.

You can also create a few essences and trinkets up to 420 in Mechagon once you get the robot guy/vendor added.

you probably know all this anyway...


I think we're only two months out from the prepatch, it's apparently in PTR now. So the leveling is worth it, I don't know how high it is worth gearing...

Yeah I'm not going to invest much time outside of the occasional heroic/timewalking dungeon gearing my characters. At this point it's about getting a feel for everything and deciding what I'd main if I decide to play shadowlands. I've been leveling my hunter the last 2 days, and am quite enjoying beast master spec.
 

Totenkindly

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Yeah I'm not going to invest much time outside of the occasional heroic/timewalking dungeon gearing my characters. At this point it's about getting a feel for everything and deciding what I'd main if I decide to play shadowlands. I've been leveling my hunter the last 2 days, and am quite enjoying beast master spec.

I think the TW events are pretty good for lower-geared characters.
Typically now since you only get 425 drops and 445 for completing the event, I only do one dungeon per character to get the 500 TW credits.

What's weird now -- they are changing heirlooms so much for SL, I'm not sure if they are worth buying. From the initial discussions online on how they work in PTR, players were not really happy. Most I saw clamouring for reimbursement of gold, which I get -- I probably sank about 200K into upgrading a variety of them over the years, since there's four categories of armor + then weapons/shields/trinkets/rings. I pretty much spend my TW tokens on the mounts, pets, xmog I don't have, and (when I needed it) rep for Exalted.

the TW rep bonuses are useful if you are working on Exalted.

That's cool with BM, I haven't really done that spec at all. The Marksman doesn't do a lot with the pet, although it does hold aggro just fine. You can have two pets up at once, right? Because I think I have experienced that in PVP, it's the most annoying thing about having a Hunter in a group attacking you and you're trying to figure out what to kill to just thin things out. having two animals jump you while you're fighting players is just frustrating.
 

Totenkindly

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I did a 4 mask on Orgrimmar yesterday. There is no point in waiting. I have about 15 attempts saved up (and can keep gathering the currency for more), but I should start my 5 mask run attempts today and do at least one a day. There's only 4-6 weeks left probably until the prepatch and all corruption is purged. I think I am going to die alot, but that is also probably the only way I will learn now, at this stage, and improve my game. I really want the worm mount + the "of the faceless" title for solo runs.

---

I hit 288 mounts (with a target of 300, for the Lord of the Reins achievement) today. I've been pulling mounts out of my butt and now am scrounging. I started a stable in Draenor with one character and can pull in 6-8 more mounts that way, but the rest might just be random drops and/or purchases, which I shy away from. Will keep perusing the lists on what can be acquired. And the first week in September I will try to bust on the Darkmoon dailies and buy at least one mount if I can. 300 is my goal; after that I won't really be focusing on a mount #. I just want the blue asian dragon mount you get as a reward.

---

Given up on 100 Exalteds right now, I currently have 92. I can get four more, I believe, by just grinding pirates, and then I'm really scrounging and it might just be worth waiting until SL drops and get four easy Exalteds there. Which is a bummer, because again it's another mount reward, and thus would be another in my "lord of the reins" achivement.

---

My guild ran 12-person or so Heroic raid last night on Nyolotha or whatever it's called; we did the first three bosses in Heroic, with only wipe -- and it was because half the group hadn't done the raid and missed the onset of one of the immediate-kill mechanics. We blew through the other attempts easily, then redid on Normal for the heck of it. There, the tank screwed up on Wrathion at 25% and we ran around trying to stay alive -- I was "tanking" the dragon as a Havoc DH by basically just running like F around the board, kiting it, and trying not to die... We got him to about 1% before losing. I was like, "I tanked the dragon! I tanked the dragon!" and the tank was like, "yeah, wanna do it again? I'll let the DPS DH tank him np?"

Anyway, it ended up being a good experience. I got no good drops but they were 460 and I was already at 465 gear level, so... whatever. We ran discord, and the raid leaders coached us before each boss, then provided instructions during the raid. They were very good, honestly. I am fairly confident I can repeat the first three bosses in Heroic and not die unless the rest of my group sucks.
 

Totenkindly

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I logged into the Public Test Server (PTR) last night for the heck of it. It's pretty easy to copy characters over from Retail, but I was kinda floored in a good way by their revamp of the character creation screen.

Everything (for both factions) is on one page, and they really did a great job at creating a high-frills experiences at character creation. All the class animations (new for the upcoming release) are pretty awesome and there's different poses for some of them based on race. The design detail looks more exquisite, and the options are easier to use and there are more of them, especially for hair styles and skin color. I am expecting to see a lot of blood/night elf drow in the early days of SL. you can also even do things like synchronize/limited-color of racial jewelry, or have two different colored eyes. They still haven't gone for a truly gradient approach like I've seen in some character creators for other games (they just offer selections to choose from) but it definitely looks a lot better than it has ever looked and it's about time for a game of this durability to expand a bit in this regard.

The weird thing is that it's still pretty buggy -- mainly in terms of templates not loading correctly and/or the character random appearance generator having some bugs. Like, at times the face templates in the character presenter disappeared -- leaving a white patch where the face should be -- and the random generator, if you had chosen black/dark skin, was getting stuck on the RND, so every "random" character had the exact same skin color even while the other items changed.

I did not really play more than a few minutes because none of my add-on's were active and so bags and other things were a living hell to use. The level and gear squish is in place. But I had just wanted to look at the character generator anyway.
 

Totenkindly

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October 26

That is the release date for Shadowlands.

Which means I have only about four weeks at best if I want to finish my 5 mask runs and get my mount/title. I'm trying, but damn... I feel like I suck because I've seen videos of people running it with a 440 level pally early on. My play just isn't precise enough yet. I can do 3 mask runs easy, and I've done 4 masks in both scenarios. But that last mask cuts your sanity in half, so the margin of error is just sliver-thin.

Last week, I ran in Stormwind twice and died at the same spot. I did the corrupted areas easy, but when I went to do Mage Tower (which I find easier than Old Town), I killed BOTH of the pre-bosses without an issue... and then died at the same damned trio -- the portal keeper in the center with two illithiads there. They will try to stun / sanity-drain you (which is bad enough), but if you get a bad Madness break like I did, you can get Feared into something else that does the same crap. Both times I went from no deaths and full spheres to dying, then dying again, without ever finishing that encounter. It was disgusting. I at least wanted to fight the boss, who I think I can beat. Once you know his mechanics, he's not too bad -- you basically have to suck up an entropic missile OR take a polymorph from him, and when he ports to the other end, simply run up the very edge of the left or right because you won't get hit by anything. Pretty easy.

Anyway, when the prepatch drops, all corruption will be stripped out, so that will be the end of that. It will also mean I won't be doing much but xmog runs because it's like a power downgrade, what's the point?
 

Totenkindly

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So I'm kind of sick with my mount questing.

I am stuck at 291 (trying to get to 300, and for some reason my last two mounts did not register despite being "world" mounts... hmmm.)

Because I have ten characters I'll try each day/week with to get drops, I have a chart where I can mark off if a particular character tried already that week. I'm running stuff like Oondasta, Sha of Anger, Galleon, Nalak, Rukhmar, and Lich King. If I get a drop, I'll just add a new item to take that columns place the next week.

Last weekend, I did finally get a long-term drop I've been trying for -- the Heavenly Onyx Thundering Serpent from Huolon on Pandaria's Timeless Isle. I basically realized there was no loot lock, so I could try more than once a week on a single character. No longer had to make the rounds. I just stuck my archer there and ended up dropping Huolon (who spawns every 20-90 minutes) a number of times in 30 hours and on the 10-11th drop, I finally got this mount. You don't need to stay, I would just sit at the spawn point and log back in periodically to see if he was up... and people don't really go there much anymore, so he often was. He is supposed to be a 1% drop chance. I probably killed him 70-80 times over the years.

Heavenly-Onyx-Thundering-Serpent.jpg

Photo courtesy of Lleisl, Lighttouched Draenei paladin

This version looks just like the regular Onyx Serpent mount you can get as part of a questline (I think), but this one has the lightning effect rippling over him regularly.

Another thing -- since war Mode On and Off count as "two" separate shards so to speak (they're like their own instances of the game), I usually do the World Monster drops in War Mode On because few people seem to run through Pandaria doing that. The bosses were typically up, whereas in World Mode off I'd often have to wait up to 15 minutes for the next spawn.


Anyway, I am also sitting at 299 toys (hopefully to get #300 today -- the Blingtron 5000), and that will give me another mount.


EDIT: The missing two mounts in my list picked up when I acquired the Shadowbarb mount (it takes a number of daily quests, but today was my day to actually be given it) and just had the Mechanized Lumber Goblin mount given me for 300 toys since I got Blingtron, so ... 293 mounts?

And that might be enough for the 300, I will be finishing up the stable quests within a week in Draenor; they gave me one mount already, but it should be seven more once they are all trained. So then you get the Azure Cloud Serpent mount I think.
 

Totenkindly

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Cleared the 300 toys and really close to clearing 300 mounts, via the Draenor garrison mount training/collection + finally getting two out of the three Zandalari warbringer mount drops in Pandaria. (They are supposed to be 5% drop chance, but I swear I did not get my first until killing probably 60+ warbringers across my character stable, and then the second around 75 kills. It was so bad, I was wondering if the drop chance had changed.)


But more importantly -- I did my first five mask run last night! (Orgrimmar) There's so little time left, the prepatch in a few weeks ends this content.

I did four runs earlier in the week on three mask to get a feel for how it played, with the madnesses in question for the week. Also, I am trying to get 100K coins (from the same runs) for the bug mount before everything ends; but the currency used to fund the runs is limited. On 3-4 mask, I could pull in about 4k coins a run, but that's still a lot of runs. However, you get another form of currency as well when you do a run, which you can then ALSO use to buy further runs. Long story short, I was worried I didn't have enough time to either go for the 5M runs OR just go for coin farming. I was even working on farming coins with my DH but didn't know if I had time. But now I figured out I could do both and still possibly succeed in both by end of the expac.

I also figured I was gonna die horribly doing the 5M and have trouble just diving in. I am a procrastinator by nature when I expect failure.

Anyway, with everything else going on, I don't think I tried my first 5M in Orgrimmar until yesterday. And I actually got to the freaking last boss on this run (I was shocked!)... then was out of Drums (which give you the 50 second haste). I had lost my extra life earlier on a really bad turn of events, and ended up only getting shadow Thane down to about 40%... it was so odd, I was alive... then suddenly I was dead, without feeling like I was running low. I must have taken a sanity hit or something. It felt like a huge lost opportunity, since I would now have to start over and hope to get as far again.

So I ended up doing a bunch of stuff and then did a "final run for the week" at 11:30pm figuring I was gonna die and the earlier run was a fluke.... but hey, I was gonna try.

And despite a few really bad turns where I thought my run was going to end, somehow I got to the end fight with Thane (Yes, I survived Rexxor somehow! AGAIN!) with an orb AND my extra life. I fought hard... and was really frustrated when I died while getting him to 5-10%... then realized I still had my extra life... and I just blitzed him and took him out. When he fell, I actually stood up and cheered in my room, I was so excited. It was the most excited I think I have been about completing something in WoW for a long long time. And it also took a lot of "just relax and play it out, rather than trying to rush it or take unnecessary risks." Play the mechanics.


Not an image of my achievement panel, it is someone else's -- but it's all the same stuff earned.


This was a big deal because it tells me (1) I might be good enough to do this after all and (2) I no longer have to worry about completing a 5M run in Orgrimmar to get the achievement, I can dump all my resources into Stormwind which starts today. IOW, I have great positioning. But SW is superhard... although in my favor, I learned it first and found it easier for awhile than Orgrimmar.

I am going to add a final corruption today, I think it's on vendor rotation for today's rotation. My corruption protection on my cloak is at 119 currently. It just depends on the double madness schedule for the final two SW weeks. But if I can just survive ONE run, I can get my achievement and mount. I still don't know if I can do it, but I'm glad I tried, I feel like doing this also made me a more skilled player -- I rely more on my knowledge and skill with actual mechanics vs just being lazy and blitzing things under high iLvl. It's making me play different in other types of content as well, I think about interrupts and positioning much more.

Note: I really hate Hot Foot. It's usually just an annoyance in less than 5 mask runs; but for 5M, for melee, depending on the zone, it can really get you killed. In fact, in the EASIEST zone of the Orgrimmar map (usually a cakewalk), it complicates the zone -- it can throw you off the walkways into either another pack of mobs OR into an area where you have trouble getting back on the walkway and/or pinned between things in the environment, and thus it can kill your run in about 5 seconds. But by the end of Orgrimmar, I was even starting to understand how it worked and could sometimes trigger a jump in a direction I wanted to go in. it looks like it won't throw you until (1) the onset timer hits and (2) then you move, and it throws you in whatever direction you were moving. So just make sure whichever direction you choose to move after the initial onset, is where you want to be.
 

Totenkindly

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Two new mounts (and I bumped over 300, so Lord of the Reins title). I'll explain more about them in a moment.

Heavenly Azure Cloud Serpent
Heavenly-Azure-Serpent.jpg

Photo courtesy of Saelki the Fearless, blood elf paladin

The Heavenly Azure Cloud Serpent uses a similar model to the golden cloud serpent you can buy for hitting Exalted in the Emperor's rep on Timeless Isle in the Pandaria expac. It is the reward for reaching 300 unique mounts usable by one character (which is tracked in the Achievements panel), along with the usable title of "Lord of the Reins." Sometimes the tracker doesn't update properly, then when you add a new mount it will suddenly update to the proper count. That's what happened to me here -- I was at 298, added the Rajani Warserpent, and suddenly it recalibrated to 303 mounts. There is another special mount award at 350. Also, occasionally Blizzard changes the mount rewards at different levels for those who have not yet reached them.

Anyway, the only way to receive this mount is to get the Lord of the Reins achievement as noted.

Rajani Warserpent
Rajani-Warserpent.jpg

Photo courtesy of Saelki the Fearless, blood elf paladin

The Rajani Warserpent is a boss drop in the Mogu Assault in the Vale (center of Pandaria). Rei Lun (a similar looking dragon to the drop) spawns during this assault, which occurs for 3-4 days every two weeks in the Vale, and only during this time.

Rei Lun is located in the depths of Guo-Lai Halls, an area that was added back in the Pandaria expac... with the same obstacles towards reaching this chamber that those playing Pandaria might remember -- go through an arch in the northern part of the zone, down the long stairs, straight across the first room, through the two trapped floor areas [note: only step on the tiles matching the tile right before each trapped area to avoid traps, and pause as needed to avoid the stun trap from the statues], down the next steps and loop back into the large underground chamber where Rei Lun will spawn, dodging any mogu trash along the way.

Rei Lun only spawns once every 40-60 minutes or so, so without using Group Finder, you're stuck with a long camp (esp if you don't know his last spawn time). With Group Finder, though, it becomes a viable run. Search "Rei" in the Group Finder, and chances are that someone will start a group within a few minutes, after Rei spawns in their shard; and then simply join and hop into that shard for the farm. This is quick enough in the evenings (basically as soon as the entire continental USA is after-work hours) that I could run ten characters through the farm within the space of an hour or less. You can only loot Rei Lun once per daily reset.

This is also a case where you can just park characters you don't use often right down in the area (if you hug the balcony next to the fire vats, you won't aggro anything) and then just zone in occasionally and do a Group Finder to see if Rei Lun is up. Since the assault only runs 3-4 days, that's not much time to park if you have characters you do not often use.

(For a sense of the drop rate: I've read it to be 1-2%, and it can drop multiple times in a single farm, it's all personal loot. For my personal experience, from what I tallied during my organized farming of Rei Lun, I killed him somewhere around 70-75 times altogether, probably, before the scale dropped. But it's a fast farm. For example, in the prior Mogu assault, I logged 30 farm attempts, and this time I had logged 11 attempts within about a 24 hour period and it dropped. The bosses with weekly loot lockups seem to take forever to farm.)

Another thing (and this goes for most boss groups in open world content) -- War Mode On and Off count as separate shards, based on how they are programmed. When you switch WM, you're actually just being moved from a world that allows open PVP to one that does not and vice versa. If you join a group that is one WM setting and you are of the other, you won't see the spawn or the group even if it lets you on. So proper protocol is for the listing to note WM OFF or WM ON. If the listing matches your WM setting, join; otherwise, ignore that group. You can only change WM in a rest area, so you're stuck with whatever setting you have unfortunately. Most Alliance groups are WM OFF for this boss, so you'll have more luck with WM OFF; for Horde, you will see close to an equal ration of OFF and ON, so you can take your chances. The thing is, WM ON is used less, so you might have more chance of finding the spawn still up yourself. Then again, in WM ON, you can be attacked while fighting Rei Lun or while waiting for the spawn. Anyway, pick your poison.

The drop is not the actual mount; it is a white pristine scale that you then take to the vendor elsewhere in the Vale area (where the daily quest hub is) and use it to BUY the mount. You cannot buy the mount in any other way than by trading in the scale, and the scale has no other value.

The war serpent mount is more detailed than the old cloud serpent mounts (you can compare above) and is the exact model as the pinkish serpent mount also acquired in the vale during the Mogu Assault (the one where you get a random Lasso drop, then wait up to an hour in the sky for it to spawn and you have to chase and lasso before other players do). However, that spawn does not have the ongoing lightning crackle feature that the warserpent does.
 

Totenkindly

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Ran a 4M in Stormwind last night, to "feel things out" after struggling during the 3m earlier in the week. I had less of a problem than the 3M, but I keep tweaking my ret pally build and talents, and adding new scroll/flask buffs,etc., to the mix so maybe that was helping.

Also I keep familiarizing myself with the progression and map, in terms of exactly who and what is where and what to look out for. The problem is that it gets incrementally harder with a HALF-sanity pool... because stuff that you think "Oh I was only at 50% sanity, no sweat" would kill you in 5M. I think maybe the bar is never to have Dark Imagination monster appear in 4M -- if that happens, it means you went under 50% and would have died in regular 5M. You get ONE free life at this level of play, but typically you want to save that for Alleria, the final boss, if at all possible.

Anyway, I dealt with Alleria fine, I am getting more used to how she needs to be dealt with. The problem is she makes the center of the board a mess for melee characters, so it's a far longer fight than you want -- you cannot blitz her, you have to attacking during openings, then dodge/run/hide. Another problem is that she does a polymorph that lasts 4 seconds and screws you up badly if you don't kick the spell... and it still affects you even if she cannot see you + you have to get close to dispel it, you can't do it from distance. So often you have to suck up sanity damage running through void and fire to get close enough to block the spell -- while trying to deal with a few other things at once. This fight I think is much easier for range and/or pet builds.

Anyway, the fire I am realizing is coming when the bombs goes off... and they leave either a permanent/long-term fire mess on the ground which is why the whole middle goes to hell. If you can click on them, they get punted elsewhere, so that might leave the floor "cleaner" for fighting her throughout the encounter. But again, there's a LOT going on. Anyway, punt the bombs -- got it! It's just such a crazy fight.

I think the worst two fights in Orgrimmar are Rexxor and Thane. The thing with Rexxor is you just get in close and go to town while kicking the boar quills (which do massive sanity damage) -- but you can burn that fight if you just dump everything into it, for melee. Thane, you take out his TWO boars (he has ust two, instead of four) and hope you get a Gift proc, then play the mechanics more judiciously and just whittle him down face to face.

The worst two here in Stormwind are Shaw (Old Town) and Alleria, by far. Shaw is a pain to even get to, Old Town is just kind of dangerous, and then you end up taking Sanity damage regardless due to the eyes he summons that drain you when you face them. I spend half the fight trying to attack get attacks on Shaw BEHIND me, then making sure I get out of the way when he disappears and casts shadow pools, while dodging the eye and the two madness effects.

Anyway, first I have to see if my new build/approach will get me through the place where I kept dying previously. Not much point in worrying about Alleria if I cannot even reach her. So far I've easily cleared the middle zones on 5M, but have died halfway through MQ (mage quarter) both times.
 

Totenkindly

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sooooo....I DID IT.

I ran the 5 mask Stormwind yesterday, decided to screw Mage Quarter and try for Old Town instead (just for the practice, if nothing else -- after dying three times in exactly the same spot of MQ in my only other three 5M Stormwind runs). I beat Old Town (!) without dying, and then I was like "okaaay, guess i'm going to MQ after all" and cleared out everything around that area where I kept dying, and this time pulled it off. In fact, I forgot to load my Blinding Light talent that I was planning to use JUST for that one encounter and STILL got through it! Beat Umbric no problem, so came to Alleria. Perfect Sanity Orb drops too (one before Shaw, one before Umbric, one before Alleria -- it's the standard drop spots and you only get three, and I had my extra life to boot).

I actually got her down to 35% and THOUGHT I was going to beat her, then something happened, I lost track of her when my camera got screwed up, and I died. Disappointing, not getting her, because I'd have to do it all again...but whatever. Now I knew I could do it again, if I did it once.

Today I planned to do three runs, then felt ill and started later after lunch STILL not feeling well. Got through everything, had to do my 2nd Sanity Orb drop right before the last Portal Master (luckily it was the easiest of the five), and took out Umbric no problem. he really is EASY -- you basically have to soak the entropic missiles unfortunately so you can kick the Polymorph, but his worst mechanic can simply be avoided... just run up the far left or right of the chamber and you'll never get hit. Lol. I ended up not bothering with Blinding Light today either, since I didn't need it yesterday and just like having access to my single-target stun a lot more often versus trading it for an AoE stun that only is up every 40 seconds or something.

Anyway, got to Alleria again... still feeling a bit ill. I actually got up and used the bathroom and then made sure I still had enough sanity to drop the final orb.

Did everything right. Didn't push things. Hid regularly, aside from kicking the Poly. Took out the Dark Imagination dude. Popping crusade and my other cool downs. (I forgot to pop the crit potion but I *did* remember the haste drums this time.) I did die once (that was my extra life) but made sure I recovered. I thought i was going to beat her but didn't realize it when I had, I must have critted her from a distance, because suddenly the end sequence popped and.... that was that. "MAD WORLD" achievement and "the faceless one" title and the Black Serpent of N'Zoth mount were mine -- and I also cleared 100K of currency after that run and could buy the bug mount from the vendor. So I did it all, finally, a few weeks before the end of the expac. (Note that my first 3M and 4M runs weren't even until August 10 or so).

Here is the funny thing -- I think the "desync" madness this week helped me. Normally people charge Alleria and she drops all her bombs and negative energy and shit in the center of the temple, so you're stuck taking damage just to get to her to kick the Poly, attack, etc. But since I was slow, I hid a lot... and instead, she came to ME at the edge of the temple before dropping all that crap. And then I would move to a new edge (avoiding the old messy areas), so she'd come to me there. If I could move faster, I might have gone to her and she would have made a mess of the room. Instead all of her mess was nicely located around the edges of the room. I think I have a strategy for future runs now. whatever caused it... I ended up winning because of it.

I think the funniest thing is that my hands were visibly shaking so bad after both of the runs (the first failed, the second successful) -- like it ended, and I was watching my hands tremor wildly, I was so anxious and pumped, lol.

Black-Serpent-of-Nzoth.jpg


---

Char specs, talents, corruptions, etc:
 

Totenkindly

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So I forgot about the Perky Pugs folks -- it's a coalition of raiders that typically put together free weekly "carry" raids late in the expac so that people who do not raid have a chance to acquire the special mount usually attached to the culmination of the expac raiding sequence. The BFA mount was the voidwing dragon, and you get it just for succeeding in a Heroic N'Zoth raid fight.



Basically they have a few players who agree to run the raid UP to the boss, then stay on perpetual lockout (renewed from week to week) so they can create a raid, then drop out after everyone is in the raid, and their lock stays intact (for looting), while all the n00bs on the raid have a shot at loot. So they have core teams that know the raid super-well and complete the fight every time they run typically, and they set up weekly two-hour slots and you show up if you want to get a slot on the raid.

The other obvious question is how you carry half the raid in a complex fight. You don't. All the n00bs tag the boss at the beginning of the fight, then suicide by jumping off the edge of the area. The area scales to the living players once the 15 n00bs suicide, and the core team knows the raid well enough to complete it -- and at the end everyone rezzes and gets the mount, achievement, plus a shot at 470 loot.

The guild I joined two months back with my demon hunter tried to run this for us "raiding noobs" but we only could get through half the raid because we just could not do enough damage with all the newer players. So I was focused on completing my 5 Mask runs for HV but then was going to see about what I could if I could find a Voidwing mount carry. You can pay for carries with gold or USD (off site for the latter) for Group Finder sometimes, but cost varies and there is always a fear of getting stiffed (what if the raid welches? what if the raid fails and they refuse to take you on another one?) -- although if they are a known guild in game, the point has been made that they do NOT want to ruin their reputation by not delivering for what amounts to a payment of 40K gold (ideal, although I've heard of more being demanded), which isn't that big a deal in WoW as far as a guild goes.

Anyway, I ran across Perky Pugs on Friday afternoon. I had forgotten all about them. They're like a huge guild collective that does this service for free (and other things as well -- for these last few runs, any donations were going to help a player who was dying of some kind of cancer affecting her eyesight... :( ) And it turns out their LAST Horde run for the season was scheduled for that night. So I went on Twitch, joined the channel, tried to understand how to sign up for the lottery (it's handled in chat, and a bot filters and randomizes selections for each run). You run twitch (I ran it on my laptop) to monitor the lottery and sign up, while sitting outside the raid gate IN game for the two hours in case you are selected. Their goal is to make as many runs as possible. They check you to make sure you have your cloak on (which you need) and also that you do not already have the mount -- I guess some people might try to sneak on otherwise (even with the mount) to vie for a free 470 item drop.

They had another "last" run for Alliance scheduled Sat, and there were other groups that were going to run a few more times before expac ended, but as luck would have it, I got pulled on the next-to-last run, which I felt fortunate about. Each lottery (of the eight) had about 140-150 people signing up, and they took about 10% on each run. The twitch streamer said the numbers were actually low, normally they had about 200+ people signing up for each run.

So I got my mount and achievement, and I burned a coin and also got a 475 helm, so I was happy. All for free. I did know "half" the raid but it was interesting to sit there and watch them play it out while dead since (1) I knew the first half of the raid (some of which takes place with a split group, half the group elsewhere) and (2) got to finally see the second half up close.

Altogether, they ran 120 carries (in eight raid encounters) on Friday night to end things for Horde. Their guesstimates on overall percentages are that 65% of the free mounts came via Horde runs (and amounted in the thousands since they have been doing this since late April), but they will be doing the official tallies since they've finished now for the season.

I wish I had remembered this for the Legion runs, I would have liked the purple bird mount they were doling out.
 

Totenkindly

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I also finally started doing Darkmoon Faire's in the last 2-3 months. It runs the first full week of every month (Sun - Sat night). You can play games for tickets daily and buy prizes including a few mounts and toys, etc. There's also a 10% rep/XP buff you can pick up there (lasts for an hour) -- you can either ride a ride to get it then, or you can get a token drop that works when you click on it in inventory.

Also... and I didn't know this until last night -- each profession has a short quest you can get +5 added to your score, once per Faire. This is a big deal if you're in the upper ranges of the current profession bracket, where to advance from 150-175 can sometimes take a lot of materials and/or rare materials, depending on what recipes you have. So getting a free +5 there is pretty amazing. And it's free if you complete the quest. Most of the professions, you have everything at the faire needed to complete the task; 5-6 of them you need to bring along a few cheap items or run out to grab them quick and come back. The quests are static, so you always know what is needed for what.
 

tinker683

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Ok, few things

1) How in the HELL did I miss this thread? WoW is only one of my favorite games ever

2) Well done on the mount collection!

3) Good choice on Horde characters, yet another reason why I like you so much ;)

4) Unfortunately I don't have too much to contribute to the general thread.

Why?

Well, for starters, I am the filithiest of casual players. Not in a guild right now because I can't ever seem to find one that players a lot at the weird times and hours I play. Also, I don't care much for raiding so that excludes from a lot.

That all being said, *VERY* excited for the Shadowlands expansion. I purchased the physical Collectors Edition and I gobble up every piece of news from Belluar, Taliesin, Preach and find myself waiting for the pre-patch so I can start leveling up some of the alts I want to play (Got all of the Allied Races and leveled 6 of them to max for their heritage armor and absolutely CAN.NOT. run around character through that same convoluted gauntlet again)
 
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