Zul'Drak complete and a change in plan. Epics, Heroics, Flying oh my.
Its been a while since my last update. I went on vacation, my work schedule changed, and summer started. All these things have helped shuffle my schedule and WoW was the last thing on the list to find time to play. Well this weekend I got a good 3 days of play in and I will say this much. Its about time.
First off, I have finished Zul'Drak.
The Empire of Zul'Drak
Complete 100 quests in Zul'Drak.
06-05-2009
This zone took me forever to complete. I'm also going to rank it as my least favorite so far. The reason why is 2 things. A: Trolls. I have never been a fan of any troll themed content. B: Collection quest hell. I think there were more collection quests in that zone than all the previous combined. I also believe that already being 80, this zone provided very little other than some coin to my purse as far as character advancement. I can remember more than once getting up or getting home from work to play and deciding not to. If I look at my armory, the previous achievement was for Guru of Drakuru and I completed that at 05-16-2009. Almost 20 days later to finish this zone... Summary: I don't ever plan on doing this zone again with any alts if ever.
Because of the burnout from Zul'Drak I have abandoned my current progression of completing each zone in order and have moved strait to Icecrown. After seeing 0 upgrades for my paladin and maybe 2 upgrades for my Druids I made the decision to progress over spinning my wheels. Plowing into Icecrown has been a lot of fun so far. There seems to be very few collection quests so far. As of this writing I am 71/140 of the way through. I can recall a couple of collection quests near the beginning and thats been about it. Already from group quests I have gotten more upgrades than I have in a long while. Speaking of upgrades. I have 446 blacksmithing. I can make it all and an item I have had my eye on for the druids is the Titansteel Guardian and it oh so delicious 457 spell power, add the cheap +50sp enchant and you have a ready made +500sp one hander. Problem was the 6 titansteel bars needed to make the thing. That's not too big of a problem. I have the mats and mining to make them, its the 20h cool down. I want 4 of these things so that's 24 bars... or days if I want to do it myself.
So I decided that it would be much much faster to grind the daily quests in Icecrown, Make a good 1200g in about 90 min work and just buy the things, or the mats to make them (or both). And that's what I did. This morning was the first time I was able to fly to icecrown, pick up some 12 dailies, pool the coin and one druid is now the proud owner of a Titansteel Guardian. From the mats I already had and could craft, this one set me back about 350g was all. I spent a good 600 more buying out the AH of 'affordable' mats and put a number of bids on stuff that was way over priced for the buyout. Had I not done this, it would have taken me at least 2 more days of cool downs to build the first one. I thought about buying peoples cool downs, but that was very hit or miss. Most people are just buying the mats, using their own cool down and selling the bar. Also the native spell power is so much higher than anything else I have, I'm considering maybe not getting more spell power and instead a diff enchant to make it more rounded.
Now for some other accomplishments. I finished Gundark. That was a nice and quick zone. I can see why many would think its the easiest to start heroics in. Clear one room and your at the snake boss. Others are not too far away except the 3rd boss that turns into a rhino. There's a lot of trash to get to him. I also cleared out The Violet Hold. This place was a bit funny. I was trying to find the portal to caverns of time to do the culling of Stratholme and couldn't find it. I looked it up and it said Violet Citadel and I mistook it as Violet Hold on the map. First try of Violet Hold I wiped at 16/18 portals. The instanced bugged out and one of the gatekeepers was under the floor and un-targateable and un-agroable so eventually the other portals opened and finaly the boss showed up and I just was not able to do it all. Second try I 1shot it as it didn't bug out. Im not sure how much ill be doing this instance in the future, On Heroic where you get one try a day, if it bugs out... Seems like a big waste of time to commit to something that is prone to failure outside your control. Not a good first impression of that place.
Finally I made it to the Culling of Stratholme. This was a really fun instance, A bit fast for my tastes once you get with Arthas so you really need to learn mana control. Also I ran out of water so I was having to innervate and stuff. I would rate this one right up there as some of the top fun instances to run. Two thumbs up and I plan on farming this one a bit for offhand books.
During my push into Icecrown, after getting most of the dailies unlocked I was able to purchase epic flying for my group. Now im in the poor house till tomorrow and I can run the dailies again! This is quite a milestone. takes a lot of dedication and time to push to that much gold your first time.
Heroics: A guild friend of mine has pushed me into Heroics a bit earlier than I wanted, but no pain no gain. Subbing out his decently geared warlock with one of my druids. We have completed Utguard Keep, and The Nexus on heroic mode. Lots of wipes each time, but Ive gotten some nice upgrades on one of my druids. Shes picked up 2 epics and 2 blues that have put her well ahead of the other girls. I don't mind much as she will be my healer if I need to dedicate one to healing. Also I would rather gear up one druid over the others in case I get into 10/25 man raids with the guild I'm in. Its very unlikely ill be multiboxing in raids with them for a while, so having a good paladin and druid pretty much lets me fill in for any slot needed. So that's the path I'm going over watering out the upgrades over 4 toons. I plan on upgrading them all at the same time with other items, but these one a day heroics and stuff... It will be forever before I get 4x drops of the same item. I'm really seeing the plus side to those of us who MB mixed groups. You will upgrade a lot faster when loot doesn't go to waste. I also went back to Utgaurd Keep by myself and managed to kill the first boss, Prince Kethsed on my second try. He dropped the Infantry Blade for my paladin. I was quite happy with that. I did not try further though as it was late and I got what I wanted on the first try. Ill prolly go back when I get 3 more Titansteel Guardians. For whatever reason, getting 4 of thoes has been my crutch to avoid heroics. Get these 4 and im good to go.
So there you have it. Pushed to Icecrown, finished some dungeons, Epic flying, and my first heroics down. Not a bad weekend.
