I was looking for a cool pic of my car, and got distracted with the 2013 Golf… Pretty!
Way back in 2004, when I bought my Golf TDI brand new and I was going over the options I wanted with the salesman, I remember being adamant about no accessories except the moonroof (power windows and locks are all standard on VWs). Apparently, turbo diesels were a hot item at the time, and when they found one available, it also had the upgraded Monsoon sound system and heated seats.
I rolled my eyes at this, because I did not need heated seats! What a highbrow accessory! Pfft!
But they offered me a good deal I could not pass up (and my Cavalier was already sold and waiting for me to hand over the keys, so that helped in the decision too). So I “settled” for heated seats.
As it turns out:
Diesel + Michigan Winter + Heated Seats = Great Idea!
I love my car, but in the winter, it takes a long time to heat up. There is no starting it and letting it warm up before I leave the house – it would still be an icebox in there and just bad for my engine. (Yes, leaving your car to idle is bad for it.) In fact, in the dead of winter were I to drive it until it warms up and park for a few minutes (which is not often, cuz it is still bad for it) – my temperature gauge actually drops. In the same respect, if the weather is awful and I am not maintaining at least about 50 mph, my car never heats up fully.
The heated seats warm up much faster than my car does.
What does this have to do with anything? Nothing really, just things I think about as weather gets colder. I have to keep my brain occupied somehow. Add to that my car was at the shop for an oil change yesterday and I spent the day driving Mom’s and my boss’s cars and I was really happy to get it back. 😀 Yay, run-on sentence!
I do have some actual updates, though.
In a Mood
A wee bit dramatic, are we?
I think I may have gone beyond what was healthy for me while working on my Laz and Effy stories. Two stories in one week may have been too much for me. As a result, I have been thinking way too much this past week, and it dissolved into some self-pity over the weekend.
Luckily, Ranico yanked me back out of that self-pity and “made” me do some Challenge Modes.
But here is an idea, musically, of what my mood has consisted of. Basically, the week started mostly normal (for me, as least), trying to listen to cheerful music. As the week progressed, I finally gave in to the sappiness.
Monday – R&B station: Love the Way You Lie, by Eminem (with Rhianna)
Tuesday – Dubstep station: Promises, by Nero (Skrillex/Nero Remix)
Wednesday – 80’s station: The Promise, by When in Rome
Thursday – One of my lighter Techo stations: Days Go By, by Dirty Vegas
Friday – Super, super sappy Oasis station: Wonderwall, by Oasis
Yah, it has been a long time since I listened to Oasis, but I created an Oasis Pandora station. <sigh> The Gallagher brothers are annoying as all heck, but they make good music. I listened to them pretty heavily in high school. (I am not dating myself too much, am I?)
I could go into more detail about what has been on my mind, but I really think I have been whining on my blog too much. 😦
Challenge Modes
Undying Challengers conquer Stormstout Brewery!
It seems I am behind in Challenge Mode updates. Last week, we conquered Shado-Pan Monastery, and this weekend it was Stormstout Brewery.
Shado-Pan had some rough spots, but it was actually easier than I expected. Coordination was key. I like being able to contribute a well-placed stun here and there.
Stormstout was pretty harsh in a few different places, but we made it through. And I DPS’d! (For the last boss…)
3 more to go!
EDIT: Adding Gv’s videos for Shado-Pan and Stormstout!
Will Raid for Pets!
One more sacrifice of the Rogue (darn MC!) – 15 more minutes waiting for Nef to respawn…
No pet updates last week, so I have some catching up to do there too. Oh heck, I will just update with pics. 🙂
Stitched Pup – YAY! I got my stitchy pup!
Giant Bone Spider – Eh, he is kinda cute, for a spider.
Viscidus Globule – Still could not solo this guy with Effy, sat at 1 HP forever… But Caer has no issues.
Corefire Imp – I was very happy to get this lil guy! He bounces!
The only dungeons I have left now are Molten Core and Blackwing Lair.
Almost there!
Furtive Father Winter
So yesterday was the day we all found out for whom we get to create a super secret blog post. Commence blog-stalking!
Time to learn some about my blogger and create an appropriate post. Hmm…
If you are curious, check out all the participants on Red Cow Rise!
Blog Updates
I spent some time while moping over the weekend trying to be semi-productive. It did succeed somewhat. I updated the pages on my blog, adding stories where they should be and adding ALL of my characters’ transmog from both here and Effy’s RP.
I think that is pretty exciting. I have more stories and transmog outfits on the way soon too!
Last, and Most Cool
Thank you, Navi!
I also received a Winter’s Veil present over the weekend from the lovely and generous Navimie! ❤ My new pet accompanied us on our whole Gold run through Stormstout. 🙂
After many many wipes on trash in Pit of Saron to this particular mob and its friends back in Wrath (in fact, the entire slope from Ick to the cavern before Tyrannus), it seemed just desserts to make a pet of one. 🙂
Monday night, when I found out the 10man was canceled, I ran Effy through what Caeridwen had previously accomplished over the weekend – Molten Core, Blackwing Lair, and AQ40.
I had a bit more pet luck…
I picked up the Harbinger of Flame
the Anubisath Idol
and the Mini Mindslayer.
5 down, 7 to go!
Disclosure: Pics may have been taken during last night’s raid break. They also may have been taken while standing beside a sexy Effy doppleganger! (Who may have been Pawnfu above, and Ariano below!)
And yes, lil Navimie raided with UR last night too! (And Aesadonna is that sexeh Blood Elf over there.)
I also picked up the one AQ40 mount I was missing! (Black does not count, since I never had the opportunity to acquire one of those.) One of these days, perhaps they will make them everywhere mounts, instead of instance-only. I can hope, right?
A few things I wanted to mention, that I thought were interesting regarding particular bosses…
Effy had a much easier time with the Twin Emperors. She annihilated the magic one (Vek’lor?). Very curious compared to Caer’s 30 minute fight against his melee counterpart.
I was completely unable to kill Viscidus for some reason. I Frost Shocked until he frozen, and then I blew him up, but I could not kill him. He sat at 1 hit point throughout half a dozen freeze phases before I finally got frustrated and reset him. Caer had no problem with that fight.
The three bugs were the same as with Caer – I was all over the place (punt, stun, fear, repeat) and then they would finally reset. I was careful about where I stood, I tried to keep them in the corners and away from the entrance/exit of the room best I could. But no luck.
Since this post is mostly about pets, I leave you with Solaes hanging out with her two newest friends…
Even for me, I have gone to new lengths to procrastinate.
My mermaid story is still unfinished, laughing maniacally from the the corner of my desk. The story is done (well, obviously, my niece wrote it and I made very few changes there – only to ease panel creation) but my drawings are not. Drawing everything/everyone once was fantastic. Convincing myself to draw them multiple times in different positions… less so.
I miss turkey hands and turkey faces. lol
So what DID I do this weekend, while I should have been working on my mermaid story?
Challenge Mode: Gate of the Setting Sun
During the week, Ranico planted the seed of another Challenge Mode. Saturday afternoon seemed to work best for our same group from before – Ranico tanking, myself healing, Ariano as kitty, Finalflame our Hunter, and Gv our Warlock. Ranico decided Gate of the Setting Sun looked like a good second project.
Friday night, everyone except Gv was around, so we picked up Zweibella (I cannot get used to Zweibel’s Hunter being a she!) and ran Mogu’Shan Palace for the daily. We got the silver fairly easily on our first try and called it good. (Well, minus a small snafu involving a rocket fuel leak on the first pull, which we reset after.)
Saturday afternoon, I logged on lazily after sleeping in and then assembling my new computer chair. (Squee!)
Within minutes, Ranico was whispering me: “I thought we said 1:30pm! It is 1:35pm!” There was no Ari and no Final. Ranico was obviously excited to get started, and is a stickler for timeliness. Which I understand, but it was Saturday, and I was feeling pretty laid back, so I hate to admit it, but it amused me. I could visualize him impatiently tapping his foot through his whispers. Luckily, he could not hear me giggling as I suggested we give it a few before starting to worry. Ari logged on moments later, and the four of us got into Vent and reviewed a Gold video Ranico was watching.
I think it was about 2:15pm before we saw Final. He apologized and explained he had been called in to work on his day off, because his co-worker had gone into labor. Well, I suppose that qualifies as a reasonable excuse. 🙂
We brought Final up to speed, and headed to the dungeon.
The funny part? Our first and second runs were both pretty smooth. We got two Silvers in minimal time – 17:49 and then 15:12. The pulls before the first boss were hairy, but smooth. We got our rhythm down, and prepared to shave off another two minutes or so, discussing where we had room to improve.
Our following attempts got strange, and suddenly it was a chore to get past that first string of mobs. There were stray explosions to the face and Sapper woes and smoke bomb headaches. I think we all had our turn at stepping wrong on that first string of mobs – except Ranico, of course, cuz he is OP. 😛 Even Ari mentioned she was starting to dislike that stretch.
I have always disliked it, because I have healed PUGs through that dungeon. 😉
For some reason, we all got an intense amount of lag on the second boss, but we had a good run going and pushed through it. We even ended up one mob short somehow (one must not have died to DoTs while we were kiting to a boss or something) and we had to kill one of the two we originally CC’d on the way to boss #2. But that hardly slowed us down, and we just let the second mob reset when we jumped down to Raigonn.
Raigonn went down like a sack of potatoes – probably the easiest fight in that whole dungeon, at least from the healy point of view. 🙂 Lo and behold – we hit our Gold!
We waited a few minutes for the realm boards to update, and I was still standing at the boss’ corpse when Ranico announced we had hit the number one time for Elune! 11:59!!
Go team!
Gv got our run recorded again, so here you go!
Old Raids
I have some transmog goals for my Rogue. Last week, I dragged him along behind Caeridwen through Molten Core and Blackwing Lair. I killed him multiple times in the process, since Caer’s heals really only affect her, but I did get him a few pieces.
This week, not only did I have transmog pieces taunting me, but now – new raid dropped pets! So I did it all over again!
I am sure it is in many other places, but for those unaware and for my own personal reference, the pets drop as follows:
Molten Core
Magmadar – Blazing Rune (Corefire Imp)
Sulfuron Harbinger – Mark of Flame (Harbinger of Flame)
Golemagg the Incinerator – Core of Hardened Ash (Ashstone Core)
Blackwing Lair
Razorgore the Untamed – Unscathed Egg (Untamed Hatchling)
Chromaggus – Whistle of Chromatic Bone (Chrominius)
Broodlord Lashlayer – Blackwing Banner (Death Talon Whelpguard)
Temple of Ahn’Qiraj (40man)
Prophet Skeram – Jewel of Maddening Whispers (Mini Mindslayer)
Emperor Vek’Lor – Anubisath Idol (Anubisath Idol)
Viscidus – Viscidus Globule (Viscidus Globule)
Naxxramas
Maexxna – Dusty Clutch of Eggs (Giant Bone Spider)
Loatheb – Blighted Spore (Fungal Abomination)
Gluth – Gluth’s Bone (Stitched Pup)
When all was said and done this weekend, I had two new raid-drop pets!
Even though Vanilla and BC raids yield very little in the area of useable drops for my DK, I usually use her over other characters, simply because I find it easier with her high survivability and melee attacking. (Killing low mobs as a caster is something I find more annoying than anything – as there is casting time involved, as opposed to just smacking things with a melee class.)
Mid to late Cata, I did a lot of them with my feral Druid, Solaes, for that exact reason. She soloed Molten Core (or dragged someone through) many, many times.
So here is a rundown of how I felt solo’ing. (An AFK Rogue does not count! Even though, I tried very hard to manage both him and my DK during Razorgore to no luck. Some multitasker I am.)
Molten Core
Easy, easy, and easy. Even getting thrown into the air by Baron Geddon does not scare me anymore. I could fairly easily solo at Level 85, and so Level 90 is no biggie.
But no pets. 😦
Blackwing Lair
Razorgore still SUCKS. I tried leaving my Rogue standing in the corner. I tried managing both my DK and Rogue – both with my Rogue controlling and my DK controlling. (I was running my Razorgore toon on the desktop and my adds toon on the laptop. I really need to try dual-boxing, now that I have two monitors, but I was watching season one of SVU!) And finally, I gave up and soloed it with my DK – which took several more tries. It seems to just be a matter of killing the adds on me between controlling – which proves difficult with Razorgore running in – while I smash eggs as quickly as possible!
All fine in theory… Reality is slightly different, though. 😉
Vael, the red dragon, is annoying, because I cannot figure out how to get around him killing me as he dies. This is something I just have to deal with? Isn’t that a little stupid? If Blizzard was going to adjust old world raid mechanics, you think this would have made the list.
Running two toons through the suppression traps is FUN. Oh boy!
Chromaggus has a habit of MC’ing my DK, who then two shots my Level 85 Rogue. This is apparently a 5 minute MC too. It works fine if I am solo (no MC), but duo, I basically have to wait out the MC, kill Chromaggus, then rez my Rogue. Even the first time this happened a week or two ago, it was only funny until I saw the MC timer.
Apparently, Nefarion also has an MC, which I did not see until this weekend. My poor Rogue, he gives new meaning to the idea of a “sacrificial Rogue.” But unlike Chromaggus, Nef seems to bug out. I waited and waited and waited, then finally logged off to grab something to eat, came back on just my Rogue (cuz he needs the gear, and I thought just MAYbe…) waited some more. Finally, Nef graced me with his presence and proceeded to overrun my Rogue with endless waves of mobs.
Not sure if that was lack of DPS on my Rogue, or also a bug. That was a LOT of adds!
Yah, I just kind of moved on for the day after that. But I did get Chrominius.
AQ20/AQ40
AQ20 was also pretty easy solo at Level 85, so I had no problems there with Caer. (Screw that Rogue!)
AQ40, on the other hand, was all kinds of fun – actually, just two bosses were “fun” in the sarcastic sense of the word.
The three bugs. Grr… I tried keeping them even, I tried killing each first (which was only mildly successful as I went from flying through the air to stunned to feared and rise and repeat), but without fail, they reset every time. After several attempts in this manner, I finally decided: Optional encounter with no pet drop? Pass!
The twin emperors encounter was where I started to doubt the gear of my poor DK. About 15 minutes into the fight the first time around (and having melee dood to about 70% – finally!) I DC’d. Ugh! The second time around… I dunno, it was long, really long. I dare say a half hour at least. But progress was being made, and I stuck through.
Best part: no pets. 😦
Naxxramas
I have only seen Kel’Thuzad once, and I believe it was on my Pally. So the idea of soloing Naxx was a daunting one.
Caer made pretty good progress. She cleared the Arachnid wing, and I got to Gluth in the Construct wing. Gluth kicked my butt a few times. I would be going along steadily, then he would hit his enrage thing (is that percentage based, 25-30%ish?) and my heals and CDs could not keep up. What? I am a DK! Nothing should be able to kill me!!
It was late Saturday at this point, so I gave it up for the night. (And I went on to what I will explain last in this post, here in a few.)
I went back Sunday evening with Effy and cleared all of Naxx fairly easily in Ele, still in my Resto gear. Instructor Razuvious made me pretty much OOM by the end of that fight – he hits really hard, and the Four Horsemen was my first time ever seeing them, so I did not get the achievement, because I did not know they would be so spread out. Lastly, Kel’Thuzad was really easy after my guildie whispered and warned me to stay in melee range. So I fought that with my back to the throne and cleared Naxx fairly easily with my Shaman.
And I got a Fungal Abomination!
Pet Battles
I have been back to WoW for almost two months now. (Wow, has it been that long already?) That entire time I have been avoiding one aspect of the game like the plague – pet battles.
Saturday night, after faceplanting on Gluth on my DK for a while, I decided I was not tired, but I wanted something really easy going to occupy me for a while.
So I wandered to Stormwind and I meandered to the pet trainer and I finally trained Effy to pet battle. I started the quests and battled some wild pets.
Well, I am hooked. Have I mentioned I have a very addictive personality, and that is why I have been avoiding this? lol
I beat one trainer and headed to the second. I quickly discovered, OMG, there are battle pets in Westfall that I do not seem to be able to get any other way! (Yay, mini harvesters! Oooh, shiny!) I captured a grey harvester, because I did not know any better. So I then decided I wanted one of EVERYTHING! Upon looking at some of the low level pets available to battle on WarcraftPets, I saw the Ruby Sapling. I just had to have one.
I flew to Ghostlands and ran around through the Blood Elf starting area. I made sure to /wave at all the noobies I could, and wondered if they were trying to figure out what the heck I was doing there. hehe
While I was battling various pets on my way to find a Ruby Sapling, I randomly got a blue/rare Spirit Crab (who I aptly named Ghostcrawler)! This made me do some more reading, and I realized ALL the battle pets come in various rarities – blue/rare being the best for the battle pets. So, I spent until the wee hours looking for an elusive rare Ruby Sapling. About 2am, I left Effy to rest in Eversong Woods, and promised her we would finish in the morning.
We WOULD get a rare Ruby Sapling!
Sunday morning, I started coffee, took the dog out, did my farming, and went back to Effy, who was still in Eversong. It seemed like forever, but I got my Ruby Sapling, and then I changed her name…
Awaiting the Muse 