Sunday 15 March 2009

I am moving

I am moving to Wordpress...

Find me here and update your feeder thingie there if my automatic one that should do it from here has failed.

I'm a bit new at all this technical stuff.

Hope you like the new site... it needs a fair bit of playing with, but I'm quite excited about the possibilities with it. The template might change too - I'm still messing with the whole look and feel, but decided to move and then fiddle.

Friday 13 March 2009

Quiet times - but busy too

Things have been a bit quiet for me. Well, actually, they have not. We've had a run of guild drama that has left me somewhat exhausted and quite sad. I don't want to share it, even here in MY space, so I'm not going to discuss that. Instead I'm going to fill you in on what I've been doing to take my mind off things.

Reputation. I decided that I wanted some more tigers. I have the Black War tiger - yes, dear follower, I actually did some pvp a long time ago in order to get my 30 of each token so Seph could have a tiger. At the time it seemed easier than grinding rep or farming cloth. Since the change in the way you earn reputation things have got a bit easier. The only place I was exalted with was Stormwind. Because I have played Night Elves, I know their starting area so decided to begin my reputation grind in Teldrassil.

I had enormous fun smacking level 1-4 boars with my staff and managed to level up my skill to 390 odd. It was incredibly therapeutic to wander up to a Grell and hit it to death with one shot. I thoroughly enjoyed running through Ban'ethil Barrow Den beating up the teddies - those buggers had it coming for being so horrible to my poor rogue about 3 years ago.

It took me about 2 or 3 hours to do all the starting level quests and a fair few I found in Darnassus too. I achieved my exalted status (what no shouting achievement - boo hoo) and bought 6 tigers.


A few days later I had a bit more free time and headed off for the Gnome / Dwarf start area. I have never had a Gnome or Dwarf. I just can't seem to make one that looks pretty enough for me. This was a whole new area for me. And it was just as much fun and provided just as much therapy. (Not quite as much therapy as buying a Kirin Tor ring did, but therapy all the same).

Took me a bit longer to finish up my Ironforge rep, but I managed it in another evening. I headed off to buy my rams (and a rabbit to stick up on the neutral AH - tidy little 25g profit there - might have to do a few more).


Finally I managed an achievement for all my work...


I was a little disappointed when I tried to buy a mechanostrider. I didn't know there was a gnomeregan exiles faction (d'oh). So - back to Ironforge and I picked up all the Gnomeregan quests - I can't quite believe I've never done all those early quests (but was also somewhat relieved that I hadn't). Gnomeregan fell (again) to the might of Sephrenia....

I noticed this bit of chat from Techbot I'd never seen before which made me giggle...


I've still got quite a bit of work to do on my Gnomer rep - I'm trying to decide whether to chase about the world doing quests for rep, or farm runecloth, or buy it. I think I will see how the week goes and decide.

I did some raiding.


That is the Heroic Achievement Heroic: Momma Said Knock You Out. Given the improvements in gear most of our guild now have it was an easy one and saved me from my MC duties - hurrah!

I did some fishing for +hit food ready for Razuvious. My little green dolly kept me company.


Next up is the Exodar and all the quests there so I can get some elephants and my "Ambassador" title. Then I might try to get enough money to travel about Outlands and buy up all the mounts I can there and maybe, just maybe get a white drake for my troubles.

Oh - as an aside - my son has been playing his Orc warrior and working with his guild very hard on the Sarth +3 drakes achievement. Last night they managed it! He was fast off the mark with his roll for the Twilight Drake and rolled a 100. He's such a lucky little devil. He went to bed amazingly happy and I think the smile was still etched on his face this morning.

Wednesday 4 March 2009

Guild Bank Robbery

On Monday evening we had a couple of great raids. We finished off Naxx 25 (horsies, dragon and the big guy), then went and had a quickie OS (killing all the dragons because we didn't have a lot of time). I goofed up a bit with our suicide kings so settled in Dalaran to sort it. The rest of the guild went off fighting in IF defending the king against a horde invasion who were probably quite surprised to see a fully raid buffed reception party when they stormed the throne room!

Anyway - I got a whisper from someone who said he was one of our Council member's bank alt and could he get an invite. I invited him and promoted him without a thought. Twenty minutes later I decided to go to IF to see if there were any horde left. There weren't. Then I decided to go check how many Abyss Crystals we had in the GB to see if I could ask for some for an enchant of a new staff I won that evening.

The bank was empty. I thought it was an add-on of mine and asked in Officer chat for someone to check. The new bank alt logged off very quickly. It was true. The bank had been completely cleared (all 4 tabs) and 500g (the limit for Council withdrawals) had been taken.


Three Council members immediately submitted tickeets to a GM. The new Council alt disappeared from the guild list (showing the character had been deleted).

I felt sick. Violated. Hurt. Stupid. My son said it was one of the oldest tricks in the books. Everyone was really nice to me, but I didn't feel a lot better. I've not slept properly for the last 2 nights. The poor Council member whose name was used to make the alt felt awful too.

Speculation raged... could it have been a guildie (I seriously doubted it), was it someone with a grudge against us (we don't let people aged under 25 in unless they know someone in the guild), .... all sorts.

On Tuesday morning a GM contacted one of the Council and took more information and told us that it would be escalated and investigated.

This afternoon (Wednesday) we got news that all our items had been returned to the Guild Master (a level 1 alt of one of our members - non Council). We had 5 or 6 pages of mails containing all we had lost (but no gold).

I am so relieved. We have put new policies in place now so that an alt can be invited to the guild, but that the Council member who it belongs to must promote it. We only have on bank tab that guild members can withdraw from and they can only take one stack a day. We are trying to decide if we need to limit Council alts at all, but some of our Council alts are currently the Council member's key raid character so that seems a bit harsh.


It has been one of those life lessons but the guild was fantastic - pulling together, offering to farm more stuff, craft things, pay money. It's been wonderful in that respect. But please, please review your guild's policies on inviting alts and also on the rights your Officers and members have to withdraw from the guild bank (in particular gold, as this was not refunded by the lovely GMs).

Tuesday 3 March 2009

PTR fun - Sandbox Tiger

Well, I was browsing through my reader list today and came across the latest PTR news - well, the latest news that actually interested me. Most of it I'm happy to wait to try out - the new talents, the spell changes and all that sort of stuff. But this - this caught my attention! It's coming in the new TCG packs - the latest Loot Cards.

On the PTR there is a code you can type in to try the new toys from Landro Longshot...


Barkie is worrying that I'm going to start spending all our hard earned real cash, but I'm not - I've been and tried it, I've had my fun...


You set out your toy spectral tiger and can then click to get on it like any other vehicle...


Wheee!


That made my day. It's those silly things that I love best about WOW.

Monday 2 March 2009

It's been a while...

... I've just not been in the mood to write really. The kids were off school for a week and it's taken me a bit to recover. I also had a tummy upset, which didn't help. Then I had a lot of clearing up and sorting out from having 2 weeks doing very little.

So - what has Seph been up to?

I finally got my Sons of Hodir things done so I'm at least friendly. When I get the motivation I'll push to honored, but I'm not going to grind. I just can't be bothered. I did have a giggle at some of the quests though. I loved the way when you used one of the guys as a vehicle, instead of being on their shoulders as I expected, they picked you up in their hand and carried you along.


When I finished one quests, the guy carrying me dropped me and caused me 2k of damage. Bit rough those Hodir boyos.

I finally got round to beating Halls of Lightning Heroic as well. I had one dreadful try on Loken several months ago and have never been back, but this week cast that aside and did the whole place. Managed to get a few other achievements along the way in there too.

The highlight for me of this last week has been BWL. We managed to scrape together 14 or so guildies and venture in. It was, however, horrible riding to Blackrock Mountain for me. It brought back all sorts of hideous memories from my hardcore raiding days. Struggling to get there on time, fighting hordes and dying lots and playing my rogue. I just can not recall why I ever rolled a rogue, or how I managed to level it to 70.

But - it did remind me what I love about my current guild and why I gave up trying to be a 17 year old with no responsibility to move here.

BWL, even though I loved it, was almost a let down. It was so easy. The bosses were barely distinguishable from normal mobs. Vael went down before we started the fight almost. It was odd. Until we got to Nefarian.

Can I just say - who named him? What kind of a person names a key bad guy VICTOR? They may as well have called him Kevin (apologies to all Kevins).

Anyway - we had a few learning experiences - not many of us had cloaks, we had a lot of mages (was hilarious seeing giraffes and cos and stuff wandering about), but in the end we got him and I have another achievement that I am proud of. Even if I am 20 levels too late, I am pleased to have cleared BWL having only ever tried Nefarian once when I had the right level.



Finally - for my old guild friend Verenus - here is a screenie of the quest they named after you...


How cool is it to have a quest named after your character. Now there's an idea for a tag, meme thing - if you had a quest named after your character in WOW what would it be? I'll have to think about that one for Seph, but it would probably involve helping someone, hugging and chocolate somehow...

Wednesday 18 February 2009

Ulduar - bleurgh!

Well, all the excitement is about Ulduar and from what I've read I don't want to go. It seems the first boss will be a mechanoid sort of thing where you will have to fight through waves of army vehicles on vehicles of your own - siege weapons, tanks, motorbikes and the like.

I play this game to play my character - I heal. I have 11 or so heals at my disposal. I even use most of them from time to time. I work on my gear to tweak my skills and abilities. WHY on earth would I want to go with 24 other people and mess about in a vehicle or on a motorbike with 5 or 6 controls, of which 1 or 2 might be heals?


These are the reasons I hate vehicles.....

1. They don't work properly with my tweaked action bars.
2. They are "clunky".
3. They are all called the same thing - you can't differentiate between people easily.
4. I want to play the character I created, not one that someone else made for me that is the same as everyone elses.
5. They don't look pretty.
6. Just .. NO.

I hate Malygos phase 3, I have Wrymrest temple dailies, I hate Nexus dailies. I've not got very far with Sons of Hodir because you have to use other things - bears, dragons, etc. I don't go to Wintergrasp or Strand of the Ancients - not only because I hate pvp, but also because of the vehicle things.

If this is the way forward for WOW then Blizzard will be losing a player who has been with them over 3 years. And I don't think I will be the only one. Sad panda.

Thursday 12 February 2009

Some tips for Valentines achievements

Well, I've been doing all the Valentines achievements and noticed on various blogs some hints and tips, but thought I'd write some of my own as none of the guides seemed to cover it all as far as I can remember. This is Alliance biased as I don't have a Horde character.

First put on your Perfume (to talk to Male chrs - Most if not ALL the IF guards are male) or Cologne (for Female chrs - almost all if not ALL the Darnassus Sentinels are female). You can buy these from Innkeepers - get some love tokens while you are there. Get LOTS.

Pledges come from Guards (SW or IF) or Sentinels (Darnassus). You can get a pledge of Adoration once an hour, which contains one of the rare items (picnic basket, trueshafted or Silver shafted arrow, lovely black dress, love rocket, love fool, bag of candies, box of chocolates, handful of rose petals, unbestowed friendship bracelet). You always get a Card or Pledge of loyalty as well.

Gifts come from normal NPCs such a bread vendors. Again the "of Adoration" can contain anything listed above as well as one of the other items you need such as bread, brew or wood crafts (depending on the City). Be careful in IF - one if the wandering NPCs is actually affiliated to SW and will give bread not beer.

You can obtain the "normal" items any time - these are Cards, pledges and crafts. If you collect 5 of each thing - card, pledge and craft/food/beer you can combine them all to make a gift collection for the particular city (and get a buff for doing it - Agility in Darnassus, Intellect in SW and Stamina in IF - you can't have more than one buff at a time though).

If you collect all three city Gift packs you can create an Alliance gift pack which you take to Peddlefeet (he's in the King's room in IF). If you hand it in you get a reward of a Box of Chocolates and one of 5 of Arrows, Love rockets or Handful of petals. Give him a /kiss and you will receive a +200 health buff as well.

This means that you don't have to wait to receive all the items in your adoration once an hour thing. You can get your chocolates, rockets, arrows and petals by other means.

The Love fools - again you don't have to get these, but you will need a friend with them. You can /pity any fool that is in the location required, so if you don't get them in your gifts but a friend does you can follow them along for that part.

You can trade the lovely dress, fools, rockets, petals, pledges, cards and crafts/beer/food, but NOT arrows, chocolates, picnic basket, truesilver arrow or candies.


For the flirt with disaster achievement you need to remember alcohol to get completely smashed and your petals to throw on him and then you have to /kiss him. He is usually found wandering around the middle circle of Ironforge (surrounded by people).

You can follow your own way about the quest from the guy that leads to the coloured dresses or suits... it ends up out the back of beyond in Arathi - I've done it every year for 3 years, but I still struggle every year to find it!

Shoot people with arrows - easy enough. Cure people's hearts - Darnassus is good because there's never anybody there - stand by the bank or up the top of the ramp in the way out. In the square by the AH in SW is also good, as is the bridge in IF.

Dalaran is a good place to find the class/race combinations you need to throw petals on.

The easiest place to get a bunch of ebon roses is off the first boss in Utgarde Keep. Take a group and run it over and over until you all have what you want (it only drops for one person). Or do like I did and have such wonderful guild mates that they know you do mad things and want strange items that they will come with you JUST for killing the boss - /hug guys. I LOVE MY GUILD.

YAY - Naxx 25 two days after Naxx 10

We did it!

We had 37 people sign up for a raid - it was so hard being on the Council trying to make a team to go, knowing that some would be let down and disappointed.

We finally got a group together and went and one shot 4 horsies (no priestly loot - that means NO T7 tokens for the whole clearance for priests - Boo Hoo). We one shot Sapphiron.


He dropped a nice dress which I blew my SK place on. I still find it annoying that I have to wear a tabard and cover how lovely it looks...

We moved on to KT. We had 3 or 4 tries and with an "almost going to be 1% wipe, but we pulled it off" escape he died!


Well done to all who were there, sorry to those who were not, but I'm sure that we will see it happen more times now we know we can do it. He didn't drop any priesty T7 either. Please Blizzard can we have some loot this week that would benefit our poor little priests?

Now - on to achievements - Valentines stuff - no time to raid this week - only got 5 days to get all that work done.

Tuesday 10 February 2009

Hurrah - 10 man Naxx defeated

Well, this week on Wednesday I was invited by a guild friend to join another bunch of friends in a bid to complete Naxx 10-man. Like I may have mentioned before we're having trouble fitting it all in but we made a start on Wednesday while the rest of the guild were doing OS and WG. We cleared 3 wings.

On Sunday we started earlier than usual and made our way swiftly to Sapphiron. Everyone had crafted their Frost Resist gear so we made easy work of him and snagged our second EoE key for the guild.

On to Kel'Thuzad. We had about 3 learning tries on him while we worked out all the bits and pieces we all needed to do and down he went!


Much rejoicing and a new wand for Seph.

I gathered my minions around his throne and began my new reign - muahahaha...


Have to do something about the decor though - the purple is OK, but the skulls are a little depressing.

The guild is up for some tries on the last bits in Naxx 25 tonight - we've got 4 horsies and then Sapphiron and KT to go - wish us some luck!

Monday 2 February 2009

Best GM interaction ever!

I decided yesterday to tidy up my Warcraft pets collection and make it for a single character (now I have a croc - did I tell you I finally got a croc?).

I noticed that I did not have a mechanical chicken. This is the one you get as a reward for doing 3 homing chicken quests in Ferelas, Hinterlands and Tanaris. I had no idea which I'd done on Seph (if any), so decided to ask a GM. I put in a ticket and waited a while (quite a while actually, but it was the weekend).

I was standing around in Darnassus, when a GM popped up in front of me and asked me, in normal "say" if I was having chicken troubles. I said yes - I didn't know which I'd helped to rescue and which I had missed. The GM told me that I'd only done the one in Ferelas and that I should search elsewhere for the others.

This was the conversation...


Suddenly 2 enormous chickens spawned...

El Pollo Grande from the guild The Black Chicken of Death.

These were quickly killed and 2 more came...


I almost fell off my chair laughing.

The GM continued...


I was turned into a pirate with a pumpkin head and rose petals cascading down - which I said was ugly, so I became a ninja..

The person next to us at the bank who commented that it would help my search was turned into a leper gnome and was blasted into the air! I mentioned that the GM's level was a bit low (was 70) and it instantly changed to lvl 80 :)


It all happened so very fast that I didn't get as many screenies and I could have done, but it certainly brought a huge smile to my face. If only all customer service interactions could be as much fun!

Oh and I went to Hinterlands and killed half of it to get my drop, then to Tanaris and repeated my killing spree in Zul'Farrak to happily escort both chickens safely home.... I was rewarded for my efforts with a little friend of my own...


The more eagle eyed among you may also notice that I got my elders done too and was rewarded with another title. What a great weekend!

Saturday 31 January 2009

CROC! Finally a CROC! Yes, yes, yes!

Well, I have done the fishing daily practically every day since it hit in patch 2.4 almost a year ago. I have never got a crocodile and never got a hat on Seph at all. My rogue and druid both have crocs and druid has a hat, but Seph has been unlucky.

Today, that changed...


As you can tell from my Guild Chat response, I was a bit happy. Me and snarly went for a "get to know you" chat in a quiet corner of Dalaran...


He's a little cutie isn't he?

I've been de-stessing a little, as you can see from my recent achievements.


The pest control and Squirrel loving were quite easy once I'd made my list (I'm a great list maker - I have scraps of paper all over my desk). I managed a lot of them as I toured the world Elder hunting. I also did a few more zones for my Explorer title. Tonight I'm going for the last 7 Elders. The dungeon ones. Should be fairly easy.

Friday 30 January 2009

Naxx, Angst, Boredom and Frustration

OK, so there's been a lot going on in my RL that has been causing me stress. I'm not going into details here, but the recession is biting everyone, so you can probably guess the most of it. I've been hiding from the world in WOW. I've been raiding 6 nights out of 7 (not bad for a casual guild, huh) and now I'm feeling down about it.

Naxx is going well. We're 12/15 Normal and 11/15 Heroic. Here is a dead Thaddius....


We're arranging 25 man runs 4 nights a week (remember we do 2 hours a raid). People are arranging their own 10-man stuff, but it's getting hard to fit it all in and guildies are all talking about what we're doing and how best to carry on with both the 10 and 25 man versions.

It's all doing my head in this week - I want to run away and cry.

I got all cross about a guildie wanting to arrange his own 10-man run and spouted off about it all being not very guild friendly doing it all in whispers and private emails and that it should be organised on the forums and all that sort of thing. This week someone has organised a run via the forums, but I've been asked to join another one, by a long standing guild friend who wants to go with a lot of his other RL friends and I'm all confused...

Argh! I wish I could clone me and play with everyone and do what they all want, be a friend to the world and still have space to do whatever I want to do, whenever I want to do it.

Hmmm. Think I might need a bit of a break again.

But not tomorrow - I have 7 Elders to visit in dungeons to get my "Elder" title.....

Sephrenia the Elder, Chef Sephrenia, Sephrenia the Hallowed... I have too many choices. Why can't I just use them all and be "Merrymaker Chef Sephrenia the Hallowed of the Shattered Sun, Champion of the Naaru". Maybe a bit long, but it does sound nice though don't you think?

Monday 26 January 2009

Saturday night and bored.

Well, I logged in on Saturday night a bit bored. Nothing was planned in the guild. I was going to go visit all the Elders but didn't really feel like it. Someone said he knew a pug group that was going to AQ40 if anyone wanted in. I thought about it for a while. I thought how I'd only ever seen 2 bosses in there and that was on my rogue and that I never dreamed I would go and see it all.

I thought that my guild either wouldn't go, or we'd struggle even at level 80 and it would be a tragedy. I decided that I'd give it a try - what the hell - it was Saturday night - surely a girl could go off on her own once in a while and have some fun.

There were 8 of us. It didn't feel good, but I arrived just as they got to the last bit of trash before boss one. A Green crystal dropped. I waited to see how others rolled. They needed, so I did as well. I WON! All those raids with 40 people in and never getting one - and now I have one! Woo Hoo. I have a silly bouncy bug thing that induces jumping.

We moved on... and got to the boss. Raid chat went

Guy1: "Tactics?"
Guy2: "Dunno"
Me: "He splits and you need to kill each bit"
RL: "Let's just give it a go and see"

Me (thinks to self) ... "oh dear, if this fails I am so out of here"

It didn't fail. We killed him very quickly.

And so it went on - all the way to the Twin Emperors. They were the first real challenge. I began to have a few disconnect problems. Not pretend ones - real ones. For some reason our internet kept dropping out or messing up or something, but I kept going off at stupid moments. I offered to leave, but they wouldn't let me and we kept going. By now the group was up to 15 of us. We killed the Emperors.

We moved on to the most thrilling sight I'd seen for a long, long time. I'd seen videos, read stuff and all sorts, but never actually been there. My heart was in my mouth.



We started. It was going well. Then.... I disconnected.....Nooooooooooooooooo.

Time passed as I frantically tried to get back in... I managed it, but it was too late - he was dead. I was gutted. All that effort and finally getting there and I would have nothing to show for it. But... I checked my achievements and there it was "Temple of Ahn'Qiraj: Defeat C'thun". Hurrah! I'd done it.


I want to take my guild back now, preferably on a night when my internet isn't playing up. I also want to go back and do all the other places and get my Classic Raider achievement. The rest I almost have done for real on my rogue, Lorienne (all except Nefarian), but it kind of feels like I should do them with Seph as well.

Thursday 22 January 2009

New Toy - Tiny Green Ragdoll

Awww - Mr Toymaker has a new toy in stock after the patch... a [Tiny Green Ragdoll] and isn't he just adorable...


He sits there all lovely for 3 minutes, then disappears. You can look at him again every 30 minutes.

Wednesday 21 January 2009

Chef Seph

It kind of has a nice ring to it? Well, I'm not much of a Mum if I can't cook am I? I can even make my own alcohol now - Kungaloosh.


I finished that and feeling on an achievement day I decided to go to Scholomance and finish off my Well Read achievement with the books there...


I had so much fun killing the stuff in there I wondered if a little holy priestess could manage some of the bosses on her own. Yes, she could! I killed the bat guy, Rattlegore, Ras Frostwhisper and then wondered what you had to complete for the achievment. You also have to do Darkmaster Gandling. I had bad memories of him with my rogue. I'm not sure Seph has ever seen him before.

So - off I went and started on the 6 mini bosses. I didn't have to kill all the trash to get to them either! I did all the little guys, but the big 'un didn't appear. It seems you DO have to kill most of the trash before he will spawn - at least all the elites anyway.

When you're on your own and he teleports you to one of the rooms, he comes with you. Makes things a bit easier!

I did it! I soloed Scholomance. I know it is easy, but for me it felt like quite an achievement...


Screenie to prove I was on my own and didn't have a sneaky gnome mage in my group or anything. (I know - the UI is STILL on my to-do list).

My next achievements on the list are the new loving critters thing and Pest Control. Should keep me busy for a while...

Squeee - Little Fawn

Yay for new patches and presents in the post from Breanni.

I got a new little pet for the 75 pet achievement.

Here we are in Dalaran experiencing some lag casting our nerfed COH, but it looks very pretty though.

Saturday 17 January 2009

Friday Five (on Saturday)

Well, my reader list was at 36 messages by the time I'd finished WOW last night and it was too late to do much, so I didn't see Anna's Friday Five until Saturday morning....

They appealed to me again, but got me thinking. Much as I quite fancy proper RP - Seph is just too much like an extension of me to do real stuff. Most of the answers I think are basically me, not things I've invented and rolled into my character. Maybe I'll try that one day, but I've always been a Mathematician and not one who is great at English or imagination stuff. Ah well, I'm going to answer the questions anyway.

1. Does your character collect anything? Is that collection of any value to anyone other than them?

Sephrenia collects pets. She has 76 currently and is looking after another egg that she hopes will hatch into another one tomorrow.

2. What just irritates the hell out of your character? What makes them happy (in a silly way, like bubbles or balloons or goldfish), if anything?

Ironforge irritates the hell out of her - well, the old before TBC Ironforge in particular. Kids juming about everywhere, whirling, leaping, moving very fast backwards and forwards in front of her. Urgh!

One thing that makes he spectacularly happy is hugs, kisses or other signs of affection before a raid. She loves feeling appreciated, needed, wanted and singled out for someone else's attention.

3. What is your character’s favorite thing to eat?

Chocolate. Chocolate cake and a nice cup of tea.


4. If your character knew he or she would die tomorrow, how would they spend today?

She would go to the beach (one without murlocs) and sit with her loved ones watching the ocean until the sun set over it.

5. What is in your character’s pockets?

Papa-Hummel's pet biscuits, critter bites and a bit of soggy chocolate cake.

(And a bonus question, because it never fails to make me giggle when I think about it: If your character were a zombie… what kind of zombie would they be? (examples: braiiins. (subdued zombie). Braaains? (curious zombie). GRAAAIIIINS! (angry vegetarian zombie) ) - feel free to be totally off the wall with this one!)

Seph would be horrified, completely mortified, full of shame and hide from everyone until she died.

Tuesday 13 January 2009

Almost a chef

Well, I've finally got as far as I can on my way to being Chef Sephrenia. All I need now is for Blizzard to actually make the achievement possible. This is apparently coming in patch 3.0.8.

My guild were all in Naxx 25 last night, but I had stuff to do so missed out. Guild chat was incredibly quiet. Nobody spoke to me in Officers chat either. So I bit the bullet and thought that I would try and get the Dinner Impossible Achievement.

I pre-made my 5 feasts and went to the BG area. I signed myself up for WSG, AB and AV. Up popped WSG. I laid out my feast. People nommed. Up popped AB, so I quickly left WSG and joined AB. More feasting.... This time I had to go do a bit of fighting, well, healing. I was in the middle of being splatted by a warrior/rogue combo when AV popped up. I died valiantly, ressed and moved on to AV. The 3 people also in the BG enjoyed my feast. I quit and went to make a cup of tea while my scary cat buff thing wore off.

Two more to go.... EOTS and SotA. I'd never been to SotA, but EOTS popped up first, so I laid out my wares. Nobody seemed interested, except the Horde Warrior who showed as much love for me as the previous one. Again, thankfully, the next BG popped up and I hot-footed out of there.

EotS - I arrived on a boat. I laid out my feast. Hurrah - I achieved!


The 2 people on the boat sat down to eat with me. The boat set off and my lovely feast didn't move with us..... we sailed off into the distance without our dinner!

I wandered about trying to get on the vehicles (with no joy), found a few people to heal, met another aggressive Warrior and the BG ended because we didn't have enough people.

But - it was short and sweet and I've managed to get all but my Northrend Gourmet done, so I was happy.

The guild also managed to down Noth and Heigan (Heroic), so it was a good night - wish I'd been there, but ah well.... another day.

Oh and it's been croc fishing quest 2 days running, but STILL no luck for me on that front. I am amazed that Blizzard made 4 pets available from a rare drop on a quest that only shows up once or twice in a blue moon. Whine, whine....

Sunday 11 January 2009

Pet Heaven

Well, I found out the new pet achievement in the next patch has been lowered from 100 to 75, so Seph will get her little pet deer - hurrah!

Also - I found a [White Tickbird Hatchling] on the AH at a sensible price (i.e. less than 200g). Then I waited for my Egg to hatch....


Hurrah! A cobra hatchling. That brings Sephs personal total pets to 76. Of course I went and bought my next egg. Kind of hoping for the Proto-Drake before the pet - at least I can always buy the pets - the mount is bop as far as I know.

Tuesday 6 January 2009

New Year - peace at last

Well, the kids are back at school. The house is quiet. I'm too tired to play. Barkie and I couldn't sleep the otehr night so took a leaf from some of our guildies books (wonder if Mariposa would mind me linking her blog here - better ask her first...) and tried to do some stuff on our own.

Barkie has given up being a chicken of doom for a while and gone back to his tanking. He's been secretly stashing spare feral gear and has spent a LOT of gold on mats for some other lovely guildies to craft into Blue Wellies and things for him.

Fresh and lively from a Sartharion kill (first time for both of us and new Gloves for me - wheee and yes, I need to sort out my UI STILL)...


...we decided to explore places alone. We started with Nexus, normal. Easy mode. Killed Ormorok with no problems - was kind of nice with just the 2 of us and nobody to tell to move out of the way of things. Mariposa and Lylia (our priest/warrior guild couple colleagues) have done quite a bit on their own in HC Nexus, so spurred us on to try it heroic.

We got past quite a bit of trash and came to the last pat before the boss. There were 2 lady horse things that heal and 2 evil trees. They won. We got close a couple of tries, but by this time it was 3.30am and daughter's wake up time of 7am was looming (hurrah for kids that reach the age when they can turn the TV on by themsleves). I'm sure with a few tweaks, frostweave nets, fear, stuns and stuff we can actually get to the boss and think he will be less of a challenge than the trash!

Other things that have made me happy include...

Having a drunken-filled New Year's Eve run to BRD to get some [Sulfuron Slammer]


We also watched the band, because someone had the remote. Then I realised I'd never done the BRD achievement, so we went and killed big chief bad guy (and all his cronies all around him - all at once - hee hee) and installed a new queen...


Much better!

I got my Wyrmrest Accord Exalted and bought some new boots and a Red Drake (who needs gold anyway). I have finally managed to get round to Oracles rep grinding and got my Mysterious egg which I now have to wait until next Monday to hatch. I found a White Tickbird (which sings like Lurky from time to time) on the AH at a low price, so bought it. I resisted on the 3500g price on the Cobra Hatchling I saw. Let's wait and see what I get from my first few eggs before spending ludicrous amounts on my pets. Still no croc from the croc quest, which is still stupidly rare on my server. And it's harder to remember to go check it every day now it's in Shattrah and I've moved to Dalaran.


Oh - on the Oracles rep thing - I was quite proud of myself as I managed to solo the boss where you have to keep your chosen friend alive. This was in spite of not realising quite what I was doing and half killing the Oracle guy first. Durrr. The fight went on for ever - I used my shadowfiend twice and took a potion. Luckily the boss was a caster and didn't hit me for much at all, so 12 minutes or so later I was a great friend of the Oracles and killer of puppies.

Basically I've been having some fun - have now done all the dungeons (finally went to The Oculus - hate it - nasty dragon controlling and stuff - I suck at that sort of thing), been cooking, fishing, tailoring, alcheming and enjoying myself. I've not got back into raiding yet - with Christmas and stuff I've just not felt like it.

But now the Council need to get sorted and work out a plan for the guild. Elections are due soon and quite a few of the current Council have had enough. People have been whining too much, it's all feeling a bit like we've grown too big and running the ship is VERY hard work - it's such a thankless task sometimes. The whole thing needs a good sort out and I've got that to look forward to for the next month or so. I think it probably merits a post all to itself so I think I'm going to leave it for now and have a sleep. I'll come back to that one when I'm feeling brighter, maybe!