Uldum, here I come!
Oh! I forgot to mention something cool–our guild got the Realm First! Working as a Team achievement on our server. Man, what a fustercluck that was. We’re all very proud of it, but it cost us a fortune because Blizzard wasn’t clear on what the requirements actually were to get it. As it happens, in order to get the Realm First achievement, you need:
- Every primary and secondary profession at 525 (even Archaeology, which isn’t on the tracking list).
- Every crafter must be Honored with the guild.
- Every crafter must have been on the server for at least 60 days (no transfers–it’s debated whether name-changes can screw you too, but that wasn’t an issue for us).
We ended up paying to power-level duplicates in several professions because we didn’t realize some of these things (and some of them were not obvious). One of our officers actually leveled four different professions (Leatherworking, Cooking, First Aid, and Archaeology–the last one in one day, and if you’ve done Archaeology you know how soul-destroyingly boring that would be!) And it turns out you can get the guild achievement with transfers, but not the realm one. So our guild achievement popped and we thought we’d lost the realm one, until our last non-transfer finished out getting his guild rep to Honored. Yikes.
We’re all very glad it’s over. And our guild bank is much, much poorer. I think we spent around 70K gold all in all, not including all the contributions of mats from guildies.
Grats!
I got my fishing up to 505…that’s all I can say.
Dungeon guides have been posted over to the new BDL thread.
I often joke about standing in the fire, but it’s often in the form, “I hear standing in the fire gives a haste buff, confirm/deny?”
When in doubt, move out of shit on the ground. Especiall if standing in it is making your health drop.
If leveling quickly is your goal, you should absolutely drop what you’re doing and head straight to Twilight Highlands the second you ding 84, because the XP there is mindblowingly amazing. As has been observed, you’re already overlevel for Hyjal and Vashj’ir, so either Uldum or Deepholm should give you better rep and XP than you’re currently getting, to get you to 84.
Honestly, it’s like they forgot that the only access to epics right now is raids. So obnoxious.
Congratulations!
I’m kind of bitter about the whole thing, personally. Guild rep is insanely buggy right now; a lot of people, including me, are stuck at Friendly and have been for a while, which means that not only are we personally missing out on the rewards we could be buying that our guild has already unlocked, but that we’re also being prevented from counting towards other guild achievements that require Honored rep for a player to count. IMO Blizz should have just put the Realm First guild achievements on hold until straightening the whole fucking thing out.
Even moreso in Cata dungeons. My first trip through ToT, I died to “fire” multiple times, largely because I was too busy gawking at the scenery to pay attention to puddles of death scattered about on the ground. Worse, Cata puddles of death really are puddles of death–not like the weaksauce stuff in WotLK, where you could stand in the stuff to finish channeling that spell, or that long cast time nuke, eat a sandwich, scratch, have some hot cyber, and slowly amble out of the puddle when you get around to it. Cata puddles of death will melt your face in a few seconds. Feets don’t fail me now. Blink also helps.
Yeah, I sympathize. One of our other officers had the same rep problem (which was one of the reasons why we had to level multiple folks on professions–he maxed it out super-fast but was stuck at Friendly). I believe they did suspend the achievement (not sure if it’s back yet) but we sneaked in under the wire before they did. I don’t feel too guilty about it, considering the amount of time, effort, and money we put into making sure we got it (and the fact that we’d have had it several days earlier if Blizz had been clear). But I can definitely see that a lot of folks are pissed.
Oh, can someone tell my what causes your title to be <Recruit of (guildname)> instead of just showing your guild name? It does not seem to be related to reputation or rank.
I’m having fun in my lovely 1 person guild where I don’t even get to be a bloody Officer. It actually belongs to two of my friends, one of which has quit the game and the other plays sporadically. I keep on asking to be made an Officer, if only so I can add alts and admin the new guild stuff if someone needs to.
It’s based on your guild reputation. Once you hit Honored, it will show you as “Guardian of (guild name)”. You’ll only see it on your fellow guildies, though: it doesn’t show up for people in guilds other than your own.
BTW, exalted is “Champion of (guild name)”.
Hmm, I think I’m still at friendly now. But my other toons – who are still neutral with the guild because I haven’t been playing them as much – just have the guild name. That’s counter-intuitive.
If they’re really dragging their heels, there’s no reason you can’t just make your own guild. Then you’d be the GM! You could even get most, if not all, of the charter signatures you’d need from SDMBers–we’ve had no problem in the past getting people to roll alts on the necessary server for the express purpose of signing.
One thing to note, though–in order to invite anyone to a guild, you need to be online at the same time. So if your alts are on the same account as your main, you won’t be able to invite them without an alt account or a friend, anyway.
Better yet, drop that guild, transfer over to Cairne and join ussssssssss…
Yeah, I was mousing over a quest-reward green wand for my mage, and it was superior in every way to the purple iLvl 245 wand she’d purchased with Frosts, and yet GS was giving the old, inferior purple a higher score.
Yeah, on both my mage and my pally, I’ve watched my overall gear score drop at the same time all of my stats are going higher.
I implied, without specifically stating, that I meant all the freshwater pools other than the Deviate and Sagefish/Greater Sagefish pools.
Right - Deviates were (and still are) Barrens-only, and the Sagefish/Greater Sagefish pools appeared, pre-Cata, only in specific zones —Sagefish in Hillsbrad and Ashenvale, and probably a couple others, and Greater Sagefish in STV and maybe a couple other zones. But there were pools in pretty much every zone that had water, and they weren’t all Sagefish/GS schools. I think the first time I ever got [The Old Gnome and the Sea] achievement was in Loch Modan, which didn’t have Sagefish, so it was either a junk pool or some other kind of fish.
But like I think I said, my memory could simply be faulty. I’m just positive that I’d seen other kinds of fish pools pre-Cata.
Likewise.
My level 40 nelf priest picked up the quest to rescue Metzen last night, and then I had the sudden thought, “Oh crap! How do I get to Searing Gorge now that the Badlands is cut off from Loch Modan?” So I checked the tunnel up the road from Thelsamar, and found the gate gone and that smart-alecky Mountaineer Pebblekitty just sitting there quietly on her ram (I guess we must have shut her up, what with everybody killing that thunderlizard 
) Unfortunately, once I was in Searing Gorge I discovered I was going to have to fight through one level 47 spider after another, and decided the hassle wasn’t worth it and abandoned the quest.
My paladin sat in queue for 40 minutes after specifically queueing for The Nexus to try to get that hat for the holiday achievement, and was very annoyed when only one person could get it. Then the tank immediately dropped when he didn’t win it, followed by the person who did get it, and the rest of us just bagged it. I mean, I was only there for the hat too, but I’d intended to finish the instance just to be polite. OTOH, I was glad to find out the hat was still available in the Wrath heroics. I was going to be very irate if it was only available from level 85 heroics. I missed out last Winter Veil, and then they dropped Cata right before this WV, and I would not want to have to race to 85 just so I could try for the hat.
Also, this little bit from Hyjal had me roaring in hilarity and surprise that it actually went “live”:
http://www.mister-rik.com/hosted/kristoff_mannheim.jpg
(This was in response to a “talk” option below the quest link that said, “So, Kristoff, how’s your research progressing?”)
Also, question: Am I correct in my position that it’s pretty wasteful to enchant greens? In Wrath, I pretty much only enchanted gear if it was blue or purple and I figured I’d be wearing it for a while. I’m tempted to put Berserker on my paladin’s new weapon, but Abyss Crystals are still 10g-12g a pop on her server, and I don’t feel like spending 100g+ to enchant something that’s going to be replaced soon.
There are quite a few “adult” pieces of dialogue in Cata. From “Thrall’s balls!” in Vashj’ir to Adarrah calling Budd’s escape plan “half-assed” in Uldum.
IIRC, the old “freshwater” pools were oily blackfin and maybe firefin snappers, though those all appeared in saltwater, as well. Now they’re saltwater only.
The xmas hat drops off of normal cata bosses too (any dungeon, just one boss will drop it).
I personally wouldn’t enchant any leveling greens unless it gave me a skill point.
Winter hats are available in regular Cata instances - specifically I saw it drop from the end boss in Stonecore.
Not much point enchanting your gear until you start queuing (or trying to) for heroics unless you are loaded or you’re levelling inscription.
I like being in danger again while out in the world - I am levelling with my former Wrath levelling buddy and we both died a couple of times last night in Deepholm, landing at a respawn point for waves of attackers is not a good idea btw. Though contrarily my low level rogue is invincible outside of BGs, recuperate is really OP to be honest.
Standard abbreviation in my battlegroup, but in any case, if someone uses an abbreviation you don’t understand, don’t you ask? I do, but I left my shame on the side of a country road years ago.
This Adarrah (sp?) chick in Vash’jir has so much innuendo going on she should have been Dedicated to Freddy (you give her A Case of Crabs, she wants some Tail…). I do have a pic of her telling me she’s Ophidophobic - with my big snake standing right beside her 
it would have been kind of neat if she /cowered whenever a char nearby has a snake pet out (well, ok, limit it to combat ones since I don’t imagine the little ones have that label).
I got into Uldum yesterday. Beautiful zone, great questline. I particularly like the Harrison Jones quests…I’ve got Raiders running in the back of my mind the whole time. The “Coffer of the Promise” is pretty much a direct rewording of the “Ark of the Covenant”. And the bad guy on the plateau who gets mixmastered by the plane. And did anyone notice that the bad guys in the Harrison Jones quests could be called “Schnottzis”? 
Have to say, they didn’t make the Desert Fox very hard to catch at all. They should at least have made it dart around quickly like the animals on Mt. Hyjal.