Reflecting on a full day of WoW

I took the day off of work today to play WoW.  Now, let’s not get hasty in our thoughts that I might be addicted (I might be, but that’s not what’s at play here.)  You see, I took a vacation day, which I planned a few months ago, because Sona is a Wheel of Time fan. And she is currently gasping about something in the last book of a 14 book series.  She took the day off to enjoy this monumental work of fiction all in one day. Yes, she reads that fast. To keep our vacation time in sync, we tend to take these days together. So, since she wanted to read her book, I planned a day of WoW.

The Plan Was an Unmitigated Success

I had one goal for today. Breige was about 15% into level 89 when I got up this morning. I wanted to get her to 90. Nothing else was on my plate. Just get Breige to 90. She did that at about 3:45.

I knew what the next step of my plan for Breige was, but I wasn’t really prepared to implement it.  Next up was getting her i-level up to 425 435. Tyledres was on, and I asked her if she would like to do some heroics when I got my item level sorted out. She thought that was a grand plan, and I went about trying to do so. I was struggling. I didn’t want to just grab PvP gear. I wanted to do it right.  While I was thinking I only needed to get to 425, I went and picked up some 408 gear to replace my 399 gear. And I went ahead and grabbed the PvP gloves, giving me 426. That’s when I realized I had failed my reading check. So I needed 9 more points. Perusal of the guild bank yielded a Long-Ranged Trillium Rifle and a Ghost Iron Dragonling.

Frustrated, I went to the Auction House and saw the Quick Strike Cloak, realized I could buy the pattern, but hadn’t yet, and made it myself. Still not enough, so back to the AH I went, looking for rings and necks, this time thinking I’d find something I could make on Shoryl. Sure enough, I came away with the knowledge to make some 450 items there. Still shy, I broke down and made the PvP pants, and that pushed me a couple of points over.

Gems and enchants followed – the best I could come up with from my toons, which meant I didn’t have *every* item enchanted that I should have, but I wasn’t running completely empty.

My First Mists Heroics

Then Tyledres and I headed into heroics. Three heroics down, with a noob moment or two on my part (though now I need to remember to turn growl back on on Sionnach before I start doing dailies).  I saw the Pulled Grenade Pin drop in the Gate of the Setting Sun, but the rogue won that. I did, however, come away with a couple of quest upgrades and a couple of drops, so I’m quite happy.

Gate of the Setting Sun was interesting. Tyledres accidentally started the first boss fight while the healer, the gnome (mage?) and I were still outside the room.  While the fight was really long with just a rogue and the tank inside, I could tell we had a good group. When he did Sabotage to one of the three of us outside the room, we would space ourselves so that only one of us took damage, and then the healer healed us back up to full. I suspect some of the success there was I got hit with Sabotage probably eight times in the fight.  The healer keeping all three of us alive meant that those inside didn’t have to worry as much about that damage.  After that everything went smoothly, though (as is typical for me) I died to junk on the ground trying to keep up with the group.

Our healer stuck around for the next dungeon, which turned out to be Scarlet Halls. We had a wipe on our first attempt on Armsmaster Harlan. I died to the first whirlwind, which probably contributed, what with dirt naps causiong a 100% reduction in DPS. I picked up an upgrade via quest reward here.

The final dungeon we did was Siege of Niuzau Temple.  This one was by far the trickiest for me. I died a couple of times, and had to follow other people’s examples to figure out what I was supposed to do on General Pa’valak. When we were finished, I hadn’t realized that I’d not finished the quest Somewhere Inside. So Tyledres and I tromped around the area to find the imprisoned Shado-Pan, which included a bit of killing things. Who needs a healer anyway? (Well, for trash… I sure do on bosses!)  Niuzau was definitely the richest for me, with two upgrades from the bosses and one from a quest.

After I turned in the quest, we sat around and showed off our rarer mounts, and I grabbed a quick screenshot of the two of us on our Winterspring Frostsabers.

Nice Kitty

Achievements

I (obviously) picked up the achievements for completing all three dungeons, but I also picked up a couple more, which were exciting. We got Bomberman in Gate of the Setting Sun; and in Siege of Niuzau Temple, we picked up both Where’s My Air Support and Return to Sender. Those tell me that we just had awesome groups for those runs.  Personally, I also picked up Looking For More; Cataclysmically Superior and Superior. Not bad for a toon who never really got much dungeon love.

Also Coming Back – LBDs!

I’ll be going back to running the Laid Back Dungeons on Wednesdays starting tomorrow!  As we have done in the past, we’ll pick something fun that has a little bit of use for at least one person. It may even be Pandaria Heroics or Scenarios if that’s what the group is interested in. We’ll start at 6:00 Central Time with whomever happens to be on, no need to be there for the whole thing, you can pick up or drop whenever you’d like. We won’t run past 8:30, so I can do silly things like get the dishes done.