Purple Poxers 1, Leaders of the Fang 0

The Purple Poxer team took on Wailing Caverns last Wednesday and managed to clear out all four Leaders of the Fang within our three hour chunk of time. Woo! Amazing!

Before the run, Salindiar and I grabbed naps at the inn in the Crossroads. Zzz…

We then met with our fellow Purple Poxers outside and readied ourselves for the assault on Wailing Caverns.

I did a little dance before we went into the instance. This is almost as big a tradition as my lagging way behind the group whenever we’re running someplace.

As usual, we put the hurt on everything that stood in our way. This druid had a particularly painful demise.

We worked our way through the initial series of druid and raptor pulls, led by the lovely Harisan who is proving herself to be an awesome tank. She’s been great at reading the pulls and getting them marked quickly so we can keep rolling. Here she is, grabbing the attention of a raptor near the beginning of the instance.

And here we are dropping Cobrahn like a bag of dirt.

We were breezing along from one boss to the next and working on our collection quests as well. I kept thinking that Wara’s imp was a serpentbloom, which was kind of disappointing. Don’t they look alike?

At one point as we entered a new section of the instance, Harisan marked a mob and then it fell right through the floor. Hm. We decided to proceed, thinking nothing of it, when the little bugger ran all the way back up to find us and brought a bunch of his buddies with him.

Only our second wipe ever. Not as funny as the first, though perhaps it was a little more surprising. After we regrouped and rebuffed, Daxe remembered he had brought a snack for us! Yarr!

I really found myself wishing I could stay in pirate form because it offered me a much better view, but alas, I lost the effect when I hopped back to bear form. As three pirates, a ninja, and a bear, we took on Skum.

I greeted Serpentis with a dance, followed by a big swipe of my claw. After we finished him off, we took on Verdan the Everliving. /charge

Aside from the wipe (which was totally not our fault), it was nearly a perfect run. We ran out of time before we could complete the final escort quest stuff, so we’re planning to catch that next week. With our last few minutes, we went to the cave above the instance to turn in quests. Sort of a group photo…

And after, I went to Thunder Bluff to soak my feet… Ahh… can you see the bliss on my face?

Anyway, it was a great run all around. I lucked out big time with the drops and came away with four nice pieces of blue loot. I’d say more, but I’m clearly throwing this together at the last minute in hopes of getting it posted before our next run tomorrow. Work has been really busy (and will be crazy busy again tomorrow), and we were out of town last weekend… whew.

For some meatier recaps, see…

Harisan, including the looootz!

Wara ( /moo! )

Daxe, who I totally agree with. I heart the Pox experiment! ❤

DING!

My hunter hit 70 last night. 😀

/dance

I did Nagrand quests until around 8pm or so, and then caught up with my guildmates for a Mana Tombs run. After the run, we did a several more group quests (including the Ring of Blood chain), and upon turning in Gurok’s head at the Throne of Elements, I hit level 70. My hunter friend and everyone else in the party joined me there for the quest turn-in, and there was much cheering on vent and in game. So exciting!!

I don’t really have a good screenshot of the moment because 1) I was turning in a quest to a very large NPC, and I had to stand so close to him in order to talk to him that I partially disappeared into his leg, and 2) just as I turned in the quest and got ready to take the pic, one of my guildmates walked into the scene on his Kodo and stood right in front of me. Heh… maybe I will post the photo anyway. 🙂

I made it! I installed the game just about a year ago, and finally, here I am at 70. I certainly took my time.

It’s already a little strange not getting experience for things. I went to Shadowmoon Valley to pick up the flight path and check out the flying mount situation, and as I heard the sound indicating that I had discovered a new area, I thought, “Oh cool, how much xp did I… oh, nevermind.” I’m sure that will take some getting used to.

It was 800G for the training and 100G for the mount, and I happened to have about 1000G on me, so I went ahead and shelled out for both. At first, I was as clumsy in the air as I was in the water when first figuring out how to swim, but I got the hang of it after a bit. I flew back toward Terrokar and then on to Shattrath and had a minor adventure on the way.

Me: I’m flying! Whee!

Guildmate: Oh, you got your mount already? Nice!

Me: Yes!

Guildmate: Did you get a screenie of your first take-off?

Me: Yes, but there’s no photographic evidence of my getting shot down over the Allerian Stronghold, thankfully.

Guildmate: On your first flight?? … *sigh*

Hehehe… 70 and still noobtastic.

Almost there…

In the last week or so, a fellow hunter in the guild has been encouraging me to level my own hunter to 70. I was playing my priest one night when she sent me a whisper.

“<My hunter’s name> is an alt of yours, right?”

“That’s right,” I said.

“I sent her something… check your mail!”

“Ooohhh!” So, I did, and she had sent me a blue belt with buckets of agility that she’d found. Problem was, I couldn’t wear it until I was level 69 and my hunter was resting at 66. “Now I need to level!” I told her.

“Get to it! 🙂 ” she said. So, I did!

By Friday night, I was a few bubbles from 67. I had a bunch of group quests in Terrokar and was starting to accumulate some in Nagrand as well. I also had quests for almost every Outland instance. Underbog, Slave Pens, Mana Tombs, etc, etc. You name it, I probably had a quest in there. I tried to find pugs a few times for these, but never had any luck, as we were always missing either a tank or healer. My hunter friend messaged me and said she was running Kara that night, but if I wanted some help knocking out group quests over the weekend, just send her a message.

On Saturday, I hooked up with her and a couple other folks in the guild, and together, we crushed all the group quests I had. It was very much fun. Afterward, we did a guild run of Slave Pens and planned to hit Underbog next, but I unfortunately had to log because my apartment was full of people and dinner was ready.

On Sunday, we had a guild run of Sethekk Halls, I ran Underbog with a surprisingly good pug, and then I quested all over Nagrand, mostly knocking out the easy stuff. A level 68 guildmate and I worked together on more of the group quests toward the end of the night (I helped him kill giant ogres and he helped me finish all the Nesingwary chains). My hunter is now at level 69, wearing her fancy new belt, and is already 40% of the way to 70. Woo!

My hunter friend commented, “Wow, you’re leveling SO fast!” I confess, it does feel really fast. I felt a slowdown around level 60, but ever since I finished Hellfire Peninsula, it’s felt like I’ve been zooming forward. Much of this is due, I’m certain, to having built up so much rested XP. All of this leveling I’ve been doing has been with rested XP for kills. This is the benefit of having alts. Makes the time you spend with each more efficient.

I will run out of rested XP soon, but I’m hoping to hit that final level by the end of the week. Getting so close!!

Reader’s Poll: So you’re rolling on a PvP server…

… alone. No guild, nobody you know to back you up and help you retrieve your corpse if you’re being camped. What’s your best hope of surviving?

I’m sure the answer is, in part, be awesome at playing your class. I’m sure most classes have something in their bag of tricks that will help them get out of a sticky situation. But what might you recommend?

Any particular class? Any particular professions?

Bringing up the Rear

Work has been unusually busy this week, as we prepared for a site visit that included giving presentations, receiving evaluations, and generally trying to impress. Much of Monday and Tuesday were spent preparing for this, so I’ve hardly had a chance to read anything WoW-related in days. *twitch* The visit was yesterday, and after it was done, I had a nice evening of decompression through destruction with the Purple Poxer team. This is the episode in which Madja brings up the rear. (Those last few words will bring in some interesting traffic, I’m betting. Sorry to disappoint again! 😉 )

The first order of business was a quick RFC run. Wara had a few connection problems just as we were getting started, so Daxe amused us with raid markings. Look out, little squirrel!

Shortly after, Wara rejoined us. Look out, little Wara!

Needless to say, we crushed RFC. Taragaman dropped the Cursed Felblade once again (another shard for Daxe!), and Jergosh once again gave up the Robes of Evocation, this time for Salindiar. When we were telling the guild of Sal’s new duds, Daxe made a funny… 🙂

By the time we emerged from RFC, everyone had hit 16, so folks decided to train. Since there’s no druid trainer in Org, I decided to visit the weapons trainer instead, dump a few things in the bank, make repairs… and the next thing I knew, they were saying, “Crossroads? Ok, go,” and I saw four little dots fly off the minimap in a little train. Oh no! Lagging behind! Bringing up the rear! (Here we go with the bear butt jokes again. It’s just too easy.) Seriously, it seems like I am always lagging behind the group for one reason or another. I don’t think I’m the only one who will be relieved when I get travel form. 😛

When I caught up, we did the tour of oases around the Barrens. Time for a swim! “CANNONBALL!”

The water was quite nice and warm. (No, that wasn’t me!)

As we ran back to Crossroads, I noticed that once again, I was the caboose. D’oh! *huff puff*

We coupled our next swim with turtle-killing. I barely did any fighting because I was trailing the group, skinning the kills. (Cleaning up the environment, right?) Fortunately, the shells we were collecting had a 100% drop rate, so it didn’t take too long.

On our way to the raptors, we spotted a melee hunter. Hide your eyes, BRK!

The raptor horns did take a while for all of us to collect. There were a few times that I ended up off on my own. As a level 16 who hasn’t spent any talent points, killing a level 18 raptor was pretty slow going, so I’m not sure this would have been much faster if I’d done it solo. Being able to obliterate several raptors at a time really sped up the whole collection process. I ended up with loads and loads of leather, too, so I thought it was worth it. All that said, I am relieved that we’re going to avoid as many collection quests as we can.

After our raptor de-horning (and depopulation) effort was complete, we ran up the coast to Ratchet, turned in the quest, and then flew to the Crossroads. I didn’t arrive last this time, but Harisan and I were the last to run to the edge of town to join the group. Am I not paying attention? What is my problem?

On the run to Wailing Caverns, I made a specific effort to not fall behind. And look! I’m not last!

Aaaand to be totally honest, I wasn’t first either.

We killed some raptors outside the instance, and of course, it was super easy. Remember when those were elites? Sheesh! We were able to finished the 99-Year-Old port quest pretty quickly, and then we made our way back to the Crossroads and flew to Ratchet to turn it in. /train

We ended the night with a brief dance party in Ratchet. Our group photo of the week:

As usual, Daxe wowed the local boys with her dance moves. Shake it, sister!

Good fun all around. I do think that instances are where the real fun are for this group, however, so I’m really looking forward to next week. Hopefully we can jump right into Wailing Caverns, and if we manage a complete run, that would be amazing. We seem to work really well together, so I think we can do it.

One consideration for the Purple Poxers reading this… Fearing that inventory space will be a little tight for a longer instance like WC, I peeked in the AH for some bags that were a little bigger (yet affordable). I found that mageweave bags (12-slotters) were going for about 1.5 gold or less. I’ve made a fair amount of cash flipping recipes and other stuff, so I decided to pick up some for myself, and I picked up some extras, too. I’d be more than happy to help buy bags for other folks, because we’re going to end up picking up a lot of stuff in WC. Just let me know if you’d like me to send you some!

Other accounts of our adventures from last night:

RFC is sooooooooo last week

Curse This Cursed Felblade!

Purple Wednesday

You should also check out this awesome recap by Rabbit of the Yellow Poxless team’s recent adventures. Hee!

Weekend Highlights

1. Listening to The Instance. Seriously, episode #98 completely destroyed me. We were cracking up at the Fel Reaver thing, and I loved Patrick’s interview with Codex and Zaboo from The Guild. This is by far my favorite WoW podcast right now. They’re positive, I love the running jokes (the town crier makes us laugh now every time, too), and I appreciate that they’re respectful of folks that write in with corrections, differing opinions, and even silly questions that would almost certainly be mocked on a certain other podcast.

2. Running Hellfire Ramparts with the guild. I was reluctant to join the group on Friday night because I’d had several beers and our healer was not actually specced to heal. It turned out to be really fun though. We did wipe once, but everyone worked really well together. Again, this makes me look forward to raiding with this group of folks. *guild hug*

3. Waiting for respawns with a guildmate in Un’Goro Crater. We randomly met up by the Northern Pylon, both looking for pterrordaxes. Turns out they respawn slowly, so we ended up hanging out there and chatting for a long while. It was fun to get to know another person in the guild a bit better. I recognized his name, of course, but this gave us an excuse to chat one on one about our experiences in WoW (and other games), our future plans for our toons, and stuff like that.

4. My Alliance hunter taming her first pet! Hee hee! I do love playing a hunter. She’s already higher level than my Night Elf priest, and I suspect I’ll continue to focus on her for a while, even if it means it will be more difficult to find groups with her. Anyway, her pet is a moonstalker runt that she traveled to Darkshore to tame. Afterward, I moved her back to Azuremyst Isle to finish up the quests there.

5. Alterac Valley. I ran AV three times with my frost mage last night. The first was a very close match, with the Horde in the lead right up until the end. I’m not sure how the Alliance pulled out the victory because our progress against them was pretty steady, but they got us. The second was a decisive victory for the Horde, and I died many fewer times that I’m accustomed to. This wasn’t because I wasn’t in battle either — I was in the top ten for honor kills. I guess I somehow just didn’t draw much attention! This balanced out in the third match, as I got one-shotted about 10 times. Holy crap. There was a hunter somewhere that made it their mission to go after me any time I was within range. The Alliance beat us rather handily, and the Horde didn’t even make it half way up the map. At one point someone said, “Did we get Bal yet?” which prompted lines and line after line of comments like “R U INSANE?” The Alliance managed to keep us all herded right around the graveyard in the lower part of the map. It was pretty sad. But fun! I think I’d be more frustrated if I had a better handle on strategy for that battleground. Currently, I’m just going with “try to stay with the group and kill all Alliance.” It yields pretty good honor and I get to kill gnomes, too! Good times.

Experimental Alts

Between my puggin’ mage and my anti-puggin’ drood, my new Alliance alts, and all my regular Horde toons, I know I don’t need any more alts. Really. But I keep thinking of new things to try…

I love the idea of being part of an all-druid or all-paladin trio that bowls through the game together, three-manning instances. Wouldn’t that kick ass?

I’m also tempted to roll on a PvP server, just to see how long it was before I got ganked. And then how long before I tired of all the ganking? (And what character class would be best for such an experiment?)

I also have no warlocks or warriors.  (I played a warrior to level 10, and then relegated her to mule status.)  At some point, I’d like one of each to complete my collection.

Mm…. delicious alts.

And speaking of alts, Altitis just linked a fabulous blog by yet another altoholic called Altosis.  Awesome stuff.  This one goes right into the daily reading pile… 🙂

Is anyone else feeling particularly alt-y right now?

Reflections on the week

1. One thing I’d decided to do this week is clean up my lengthy blogroll a bit. My intent was to remove folks that have stopped blogging (or stopped blogging about WoW particularly), and I was surprised to find so many posts announcing that folks were quitting WoW, as in actually quitting this week. Working through my feed reader, I found even more of them. Didn’t seem like anyone was quitting in response to anything in particular this time (not like with the ghost wolf thing). I don’t think a single goodbye post had the word “nerf” in it (you keep using that word… :P), in fact. It was just that the game had run its course, people had reached their limit of leveling/raiding/farming/drama and were moving on. Maybe it wasn’t more this week than other weeks, but I was surprised to find so many. Best of luck to all those folks.

2. I think Pox Arcanum has nearly killed the Year of the Pug. Srsly. My little fire mage has been a fun experimental alt, but I’m finding it way more fun to play experimental alts with other people. Poxic folks are already cooking up new ideas, too. I tossed this poll out in the guild chat earlier in the week… What would be most fun: trio of pallies, trio of druids, or trio of shamans? (With the shaman trio, you wouldn’t quite have a tank, but think of the forest of totems!) I think I would rather try one of these types of things than spend another moment in the LFG hoping for another “interesting” BFD group. But, we’ll see. I’m not giving up on that project yet, but it is definitely on the backburner.

3. I have two Alliance alts on Drenden now, a Night Elf priest (level 6 — woo) and a Draenei hunter (just level 1). I like the look of my priest, but the way she runs with her arms swinging at an angle is a little weird. I prefer the gentle gallop of the Draenei. Maybe I’m not alone in this, but I like the looks of those two races better than the more Human-looking Dwarves, Gnomes, and … well, Humans. They look a bit more mystical, alien. I’ve heard Alliance folks say that they were never able to find a Horde race they liked until the Blood Elves for the opposite reasons — they didn’t like the monstrous looks and bad posture of the other Horde races. No grand conclusions about this, just thought it was interesting.

4. My Orc hunter, my highest level toon, is at 66 now. I am hoping to run some instances with her this weekend and also get some questing done to boost her toward 70. Getting soooo close. My guildmates are being encouraging, too, by sending me awesome gear that I can’t quite wear yet. We also have three teams in Kara now, and I’m hoping, hoping, hoping that I can be part of the fourth (rather than the fifth or sixth). This is going to take some work though. Lots of XP between 66 and 70.

5. The responses to this week’s poll are still making me smile. 😀

RFC is on farm!

Last night was the second teaming of the Purple Poxers of Pox Arcanum. First, we all met in glorious Silvermoon City to help Harisan with her paladin quest. Silvermoon is so pretty!

And Eversong Woods is pretty, too! Everything Blood Elf is pretty, it seems. /wink Daxe

The sky got a bit darker as we approached the cave to kill the dude for Harisan’s quest. I shapeshifted for the swim to the island.

Harisan summoned the guy she needed to kill, we quickly destroyed him, and made our way back to the city. I kept lagging behind for some reason. Maybe enjoying too much of the pretty scenery? Taking too many screenshots? (Or are Taurens always this slow? Do I need to start working out?) Here I am bringing up the rear (begin theme of post)…

Harisan completed all the parts of her paladin quest, so now she can resurrect us when we get squished. /Cheer!

And then it was back to Orgrimmar for Ragefire Chasm! Woo! Just outside the entrance, there was a lonely little Orc hoping for some assistance. Sorry, little dude. Try the LFG…

Into RFC we went! We killed our way down the first path, and started to get our footing once again as a group. I hadn’t played Madja or any of my melee characters in a full week, so I was getting a lot of “you are too far away” messages initially. No wonder I wasn’t drawing any aggro. 🙂 And speaking of aggro, let me tell you how awesome it is to play with a group where everyone has a threatmeter installed: so awesome. It makes things so much easier for the dps, and the tank, too, I imagine.

We were getting ready for our first big pull, and Harisan was sizing up the groups of mobs. If I remember correctly, there was one mob toward the center, a couple to the right, and three to the left. Wara’s voidwalker, inspired by the scene, made a beeline toward the center one and pulled all of them… it was too funny to watch. We ran in and did our best to stay alive, but ended up totally clobbered. Our very first wipe! Unfortunately, I didn’t get a screenshot of the battle, so you’ll have to settle for one of the corpse run.

I thought it was pretty funny. In a way, I think it’s good we went ahead and got our first wipe out of the way, too, sort of like getting the kiss out of the way on the first date so everyone can relax. (Not that I’m that kind of girl, but … you know what I mean.)

Here’s a shot of the team getting ready to go into Oggleflint’s cave.

That’s one of the better shots I have from inside RFC. Most of the others look like this:

Seriously. It reminded me of what my sister used to say about photos from rock-climbing trips. Pretty much all you see are ropes and butts. In the case of a bear druid in RFC, it’s mostly the latter. For example, here, you can see my butt before, during, and after we killed some elementals:

And here’s my butt just after a line-of-sight pull by Daxe. Daxe is always teasing the Orc boys! Little did they know that this time, Harisan was waiting around the corner to drop a judgment on their head. Aww yeahh.

And one final shot of my butt, featuring one of my favorite comments of the night. Daxe suggested we go clockwise, but then took us counter-clockwise for the next pull… tee-hee…

No butt in this one because I was sitting on it while we were preparing to take on our first real boss, Taragaman the Hungerer.

FITE!!!!

And look what he dropped for Harisan!

We went on to take down both Jergosh and Bazzalan, and retrieve both of the books we needed for the UC quest. Jergosh dropped some nice robes for Daxe (not as nice as one of her original designs, of course), and since we still had an hour left to play, we decided to go out, reset the instance, and come back to kill the bosses again. On the way out, Salindiar had a little slip.

I helpfully sat by the ledge until Daxe came to resurrect him.

The Purple Poxers emerged from RFC to find the Green Poxed team waiting to go in! /wave! (There were lots of skeletons on the ground, too. Looks like maybe some Alliance decided to try to get to RFC!)

We repaired our armor, sold our junk, turned in a quest or two, and then went back in for more action. We killed Taragaman and Jergosh once again. Taragaman dropped the same sword he did before (a shard for Daxe!), and Jergosh dropped some nice mail bracers for Harisan. Yay! I think we’re planning to do a few more runs through RFC next week to help get more pretty blues (and shards!) for everyone, and further refine our pulling techniques. I thought everybody really did a great job, and it was loads of fun. Great teamwork with this bunch. it seems that everybody listens, everyone is open to advice, everybody waits for the pull, and everybody improves as we play… it truly is the anti-pug. (And did I mention that everybody has a threatmeter? Wooo!)

Here’s the group photo of the week. We all gathered after our second slaying of Jergosh to celebrate that the Purple Poxer team has RFC on farm. /Cheese!

Other accounts and pics of the Purple Poxer adventures:

Purple Poxing Power

RFC-PWNED

The F is for Farm

LFM for Pox Arcanum

Pox Arcanum is looking for a few more good folks to join our merry band of adventurers. We’re an alt guild for bloggers (and a few non-bloggers, spouses, and such) who are looking to hang out and play together each week. To get started, all you need to do is roll a brand new toon on Anvilmar, level them to 10, wait for your group to fill out, and then begin your questing. The original idea was that from this point on, your toon never levels without the rest of your group present. (Some teams are more flexible about this than others, so in the end, it’s between you and your other four teammates.) You do all quests, instances, and leveling together — this is the anti-pug! The idea here is not to level efficiently, get to the end game quickly, or maximize … well, anything but fun. The idea is to play together and have a good time. 🙂

We decided that we’d be self-sufficient (in other words, no transferring a sugardaddy character with boatloads of money to your lil level 10 toon). At first this was tough, but some of the Poxers have managed to play the Anvilmar AH very successfully, and now not only do we have tabards for everyone, we have two (yes two!) guild bank tabs, one completely full of items that Poxers want to share with each other. Everyone has equal access to the bank tabs, so if you see something in there that will upgrade your gear or benefit your profession, it’s yours. It seems like every time I visit the bank there’s more gold, more greens, more goodies. Folks have really embraced the communal spirit. (Hey, that sounds like a druid quest!)

We currently have three full teams of five, a few “visiting” guild members, and a team that has some open spots. These really are intended to be alts, so teams typically meet once, maybe twice, a week for a play session. This could be a regular weekly time decided by the team, or they could have a more fluid arrangement and just schedule week to week based on team availability. We have a common blog, an e-mail group, and some really nifty spreadsheets. There’s also room for you to try your own experimental grouping tactics within these teams. The Purple Poxer team, for example, is talking about leveling almost exclusively in instances. Want to try working exclusively as a group of three, and form the ultimate tank/healer/dps trinity? Go for it. Want to rally for an all druid group? Rock it! I will make you all matching leather outfits. 😀 And maybe soooomeday, we’ll have a team in Kara. Can you imagine? We shall put a pox on it!

Anyway, if you are interested, please pop your info into our nifty new application page, and we’ll get you started. If you have more questions, post those, too, or send me an e-mail at the address in the side bar to the right.

/pox contagious!