LVL 20 A Night of PVP

I hit lvl 20 last night if you want to call it a lvl. My inner school of training is at 90 at least. I am finding that I don't have to worry much about doing Team Practice as I have plenty of cultivation during my time that I am logged out. I do need to figure out some way to make some money so that I can get some better gear. A number of the items I have are still from when I first logged into the game.

We did some PVP practice as a guild last night in Wudang. It was interesting to fight against someone who wasn't way over the top of me and actually learn a little from them. The one thing that I get so frustrated with this game is that I got onto a server that was open in the beta and I didn't leave to start on a new one. So there are a number of players that are maxed out already and all they have to do is sneeze at me and I am dead. This kind of thing seems to attract some of the worst griefers who just look for lowbies to gank. But hey it is part of the game and part of PVP. Maybe someday I will reach that point and be able to defend the lower players that are getting owned.

I transfered my cooking to poison making which is a lot like enchanting. We don't have one in the guild yet so I decided to get it to help out. It is an interesting mechanic in that with poison making I have the ability to pick my own poisonous plants, seems that others can't pick them or something like that. There is a little mini game that you play against your trainer to level up your skill, I am still an apprentice so I am not sure how high up I can go with it. This mini game has 12 tiers to it and as you go up a tier you get more xp towards your skill. What I found out yesterday is that this tier thing seems to reset everyday so I may have hit tier 4 the day before but I needed to restart it at tier 1 today.

The interface for the game reminds me a lot of bejeweled only some of the items you clear give you the ability to do damage to your opponent which is the main goal. You move on to the next tier by defeating your teacher. The one thing of note is that there are different abilities to do damage. If you look at the your skills circle in the picture above what you seem to need to do is fill up those 2 spots that are pointed out there, ie clear 4 of one kind of poison and 7 of another. This then allows you to activate the pair ability that will do the damage that you get from the tooltip stated. I believe this one will turn all yellow poisons to purple and do the equivalent of 1 damage per yellow changed. Also if you clear the "hands" that are shown in the game, if you get 3 of them cleared you can use that to attack the other person for 3 points and it uses 1 turn. The game is rather time consuming but has some decent rewards in the experience department.

In my next installment I will be talking about gaining xp and getting guild rep. Have a good one all.

Level 15, spying and getting ganked

I had a good night last night for the most part. My wife went grocery shopping so after the kids were in bed I had uninterrupted time in game.
First thing I looked at was the amount of cultivation available, which wasn't very much so I wasn't going to bother with Team Practice. I needed to get some more xp so that I could get it converted. I did a few quests around Yuyang village, which was the starting zone for my story, did some farming to get my wheat to make some food and get the daily quests done for each profession. I then decided to try my hand at spying for the first time.
I think I use have been any school of Wudang because the first spot I went to was Shaolin temple. I ran there with my horse and as soon as I got into the zone for the temple I joined up as a spy through the interface. I was ported and then proceeded to run up to the actual temple. I found the scouting disciples and got the 10 pieces of information that I needed and ported out to my school. I handed the information in and got the 1 part done for the week. I then found the scholars area and got my 10 Info for that as well.
It was a good night.

From the Age of Wushu forums

An interesting post that I came across:

A little introduction from me:
Hello I'm Lockheart! I'm no expert and I'm certainly no pro at the game. I'm not even 30 Inner skill, but I think I can help you find things to do in Age of Wushu if you've just rolled a toon and now you're lost and don't know what do to.

Some information in here may be out of date, wrong, or based entirely on my opinion and I assure you this guide is intended only to be a general guideline for those of you who just need to figure out how basic activities work and where they are and what they are.

I'll try to order everything here from the most basic to the least.

Location Codes(To find info faster use Ctrl+F then type in the letters in the brackets)
Part 1: Skills, What's important to level and what's not? [P1]
Part 1.5: Second Internal Skill [P1.5]
Part 2:How do I gain Experience so I can even level up my skills? [P2]
Part 2.5: Mini explaination on EXP and Cultivation! [P2.5]
Part 3: Spending Cultivation [P3]
Part 4: Money! Money! Money! [P4]
Part 4.5: Discipline [P4.5]
Part 5: PVP [P5]



Part 1: Skills, What's important to level and what's not? [P1]

In my own opinion the most important skill to be leveling is your school inner skill.

Why? Well it's simple, your school inner skill is tied to quests in the game and certain dungeons won't even let you in unless it's a certain level. You can think of it as your characters level however a high inner skill does not reflect how powerful you actually are.

The School inner skill provides a few stat bonuses such as if you were leveling up in another game and allows you to accept bonuses from your gear to a certain point. This means even if you have the best weapon in the game or the best hat in the world it's no good if your inner skill is level 1.

Note: You may only receive benefits from an internal skill you've "Activated" thus putting points into Self Recollection reaps you no rewards in the current state of the game as there is no reason to have it equipped or have points invested into it over your school internal skill.

Should I ever level up my abilities?
Certainly! However it's not recommended you go over 3 for any ability until later on in the game, having abilities at level 3+ make them cost significantly more than if they were lower level and do not nessacerily put out more damage if you consider how much mana the skill will cost at that point.
The idea being "Theres no point to have the most powerful skill in the world if you don't have the mana to use it."

In the end there is no harm to leveling up your abilities. As a level up will always increase the abilities power subsequently improving your own.

Note: Ask your school Elders, or read the forums to find out which abilities are the best ones in your school to ensure you're leveling up abilities that are important or more powerful than the others first.

Part 1.5: Second Internal Skill [P1.5]

How do I obtain my schools second internal skill and what is a second internal skill?

You schools second internal skill is alot like your schools first internal skill(That ability that you hit activate in the skill menu to turn on)
The difference is that Second Internal skill can introduce different passive abilities and slightly different but generally higher stat increases.

The goal of the Second Internal skill is to either just flat out make you stronger or change your play style entirely.

To get your second internal skill:

You must be:
First Internal Skill Level 30
And you must have 30,000 Jianghu Reputation

When you meet these requirements you must talk to your School Headmaster and receive a quest.
There are multiple tiers of quests you have to do the first quest giving you Skill levels 1-9 and the last of the tier giving you levels 19-30.

Then you must purchase the final 6 pages for levels 31-36 with school tokens(Don't forget to spy!)

Thats all you really need to know, it's also possible to purchase the pages for the first thirty levels from the same vendor that gives pages 31-36 however if you're reading this guide as a new player then you probably can't afford or perhaps I should say you shouldn't buy the skill books like that since you probably don't even have enough tokens to purchase levels 31-36.


Part 2:How do I gain Experience so I can even level up my skills? [P2]

Stuff!

Yes indeed, stuff. The great thing about Age of Wushu is that just about everything and anything awards experience, from jumping about like a mad man to going off and doing spy quests.

Allow me a iterate a few things that have the highest experience rewards.

Firstly, Spying Quests.

Spying quests are quests in which you must be atleast school inner level 5 to begin and which you go to other schools and steal information from offline players in the school.

If you manage to obtain 10 intelligence reports from offline players in the school you are spying on you may go back to the Exchange NPC located in your school usually infont of the Headmaster and turn them in for 160 EXP, 50 Lian in Bound Money, and a School Token.

To do Spy quests hit N to open the daily event interface and then select the School Spying task.

On the middle of that menu you'll see the tab for Registration Sites on the bottom left portion of that section of the window will be a list of schools you can spy on listed alphabetically.

I recommend looking over to see which school is nearest that you can walk over to and doing your spy quests there if you have not taken the Weekly spying task which gives detective tokens that teleport you to the registration sites for each school. (But you might aswell take the weekly anyways.)

When you do collect 10 intelligence reports not that the turn-in NPC is not the same as the registration NPC the end NPC is located back at your school by the headmaster. Generally.


Notes:
1.) This list is where you can select what school you wish to spy on. When you select a school the panel next to the list will change with the location of the NPC you must talk to begin spying on that particular school
2.)This tab will show you where in your school you must turn in the intelligence reports.


Next, We have Escort Missions.

Escort missions are missions in which you go to a main town and speak to the escort agency(Zoom in on your map while in a main city to see where the Escort agency is located) and then you will escort a carriage to a specific point.
Successfully getting the carriage from point A to point B yields rewards, the rewards come in the form of 22 Liang for your guild, and 8 of an exchange item that can be given to an NPC. 10 of these items will yield a single EXP Pill that will grant 50 EXP to the character that uses them. These are unbound and tradeable between players.

To do escort missions you must be in a guild and be atleast School inner skill level 5.

I recommend when doing escort missions that you set the carriage to have the lowest durability but the highest speed as if you are infact alone you are unlikely to win a fight against other players who are more powerful and looking for a fight.

While escorting you are vulnerable to pvp and if you are killed don't be too upset it's a mechanic in the game and it is something you should be prepared for while escorting.

Furthermore I recommend not escorting in major towns like Suzhou or Chengdu because the high player density in those areas its better to go to quieter cities as there will likely be less patroling players looking to mess up your day.


Notes:
To see where the Escort agency is located when your map is open(Default key: M) make sure Missions is selected and then look for the icon highlighted in the red box above or look for the words Escort Agency on your minimap.

Other method of gaining exp?

Theres tons more ways to gain exp but I find the two methods above to be the least time consuming and the most efficient you can experiment to find other ways to gain exp but this is what the general population of Age of Wushu does to obtain their exp and stay capped out all the time.

Part 2.5: Mini explaination on EXP and Cultivation![P2.5]

What is Cultivation and how does it tie into EXP?

Allow me to illustrate how EXP, Cultivation, and Skills are all tied together

For every 1 Point of EXP you have that 1 Point of EXP is worth 1,000 Cultivation points.
Your 1 EXP point is converted into Cultivation over time.

Note: The 1,000 Cultivation point value is not given to you in 100 seconds but rather in multiple happens of the 100 seconds cultivation gains you may see while playing hence why I say 1 Exp is worth 1,000 cultivation but you may only be getting 270 Cultivation every 100 Seconds.

EXP is capped at 999. The Big bubble around the smaller bubbles indicates your total EXP and the smaller bubbles are where the exp is actually located. The lowest level bubble, Bubble Lvl1 converts exp in the slowest manner possible where the 5th bubble, Bubble Lvl5 converts exp in the fastest manner. As a free player only Exp Bubbles Lvl2, 4, 5,(Not sure but I know only 3 bubbles get filled) are filled and the rest are usually left alone. VIP players will have their EXP distributed evenly to ensure they get the fastest EXP conversion rate possible.

Note:
1.)Cultivation is not capped and any amount can be held at any time. (Or rather if it is capped the cap is so high its nothing you should worry about.)
2.)Potential Cultivation are points that are gained when a user is not VIP. 30% of your 1,000 cultivation is turned into Potential Cultivation and may be redeem through using Gold(Real money currency) however it is not recommended to gain cultivation from your potential cultivation as it is expensive and cultivation is easy to obtain anyways.

Can I speed up the rate at which I cultivate my EXP?

Yes! A few methods in the game but instead of explaining I'll link you to a lovely guide found on the same board as this guide.
http://www.ageofwushu.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=3225
Information provided by Earthquake

Part 3: Spending Cultivation [P3]

I've got a bajillion Cultivation points! Thanks bro but... How do I spend it besides internal cultivation?

There are several ways to spend your cultivation at a faster rate than which the normal Internal Cultivation does.(Internal Cultivation is a Cultivation option in the game that passively cultivates cultivation points into your skills, meaning while you're off doing other fun things you're always technically getting stronger.)

The first way, Martial Arts Cultivation

In the event the ingame guides did I horrible job explaining how to do these things for you, or you just hate listening to npc's talk I will iterate how these things work.

Martial Arts Cultivation, is a method in which you spend your Bound or Unbound silver to force cultivation points into your skills.

You have limits on how much you may spend on your Martial Arts Cultivation for each currency.

By using your money on Martial arts cultivation you're essentially allowed to "Pay to Win" in a certain sense everyday at 00:00 Server time the amounts you may spend on Martial Arts cultivation are reset if you have never done this before don't worry you don't have to wait.

Theres not much more to say about this, you open the Martial Arts cultivation window, click one of the bonuses you want to use( Low, Medium, High bonuses from left to right.) and then when you click the buttons the amount they cost(Noted in the tool tip when highlighted over) will be deducted from your bag and you will have your cultivation converted.



Note: For new players ensure you have your Bound Deduction selected in the martial arts window to ensure you're not using your unbound silver. As unbound silver is more important than bound silver.



Next up, Team Practicing

Team practicing is a method of spending cultivation in which you join a group of other players, usually at a sacred location in your school, and begin cultivating in the team practice method together.

Why a Sacred location? Can we do it anywhere?
Yes, but doing a Team practice in a Sacred location offers a cultivation conversion rate there by speeding up the team practicing.


Can I do it alone? How about with just my friend? Do we really need 10 people?

Doing it alone is definetly possible and doing it with just one or two other people is also possible.
However, having a full 10 man group actually increases the amount of cultivation points used per round. Thereby increasing the rate at which your Fatigue hits 100%(This is a good thing.)

Therefore, don't be impatient, its okay to go with just 9 people, but a 10th person is always a plus and worth waiting an extra minute for.

Note: Doing TP by yourself is not only lonely but not rewarding at all and well, is a total waste of your time to be perfectly honest.

Should we do 25 rounds? or 20? or 15? or 10? Whats the difference?

Another factor that plays into how much exp is converted into your skills per round is your Team Practice Combo.

By having each member of your team practice hit their combo you gain a chain as long as this chain is never broken you will obtain the maximum amount of cultivation that can be converted per round. Therefore a higher number of rounds means a possibility of higher rewards and higher rewards means you can get your fatigue up to 100% faster.

Note: Your Team Mates must NOT go afk while Team practicing or atleast not be AFK when their turn is comming. Missing a Combo does not yield any points to your team at all and breaks a combo. Anyone who says going afk is okay and letting the TP run like that should be slapped.
Okay, so what's Fatigue?

Fatigue is a limit in the game that prevents you from abusing Team Practices having 1% of Fatigue means you have used 800 Cultivation points. Therefore getting to 100% Fatigue means you've used 80,000 Cultivation points. When you are at 100% Fatigue you may no longer use cultivation points through team practicing but you may still participate(But you will gain no rewards.)

So,

Quote:

1% Fatigue= 800 Cultivation points used
100% Fatigue= 80,000 used

Do I get bonuses for sitting in a sacred spot while just using internal cultivation?

Yes indeed! Sitting in a Sacred location increases the rate at while cultivation points are used in all manners so not only does Team Practicing benefit from being in a sacred spot so does internal cultivation. Great place to afk for long periods of time provided noone pk's you.

http://www.ageofwushu.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=3347
Visit this link to learn more about Sacred locations! Thanks to our friendly neighborhood site admin Earthquake


Part 4: Money! Money! Money! [P4]

So... How do I get money so I can throw away my 1-3 damage dagger...?

Here are two ways I think are pretty good:

First, Kidnapping

Kidnapping in Age of Wushu is a lucrative way of obtaining Unbound Silver
I won't go into detail on how to Kidnapp instead I'll send you to this guide provided by the Age of Wushu wiki:
http://ageofwushu.wikia.com/wiki/Kidnapping

That should be enough to help you do it but let me talk about a few consquences for doing actually commiting the act(Because it's not like its a good thing to do after all....)

For players located in Good allied schools and the Neutral School Scholars kidnapping is a definite No-No and will earn you discipline points for your school. Now you should not worry about this causing you to go full on evil, and you can still kidnap even if you've taken the Constable buff.

But how bad is it exactly? Well after you've kidnapped 10 times you would have earned 100 Discipline points. See 4.5 for more on Discipline.

Next is selling your stuff.

The major part of the games economy is the fact that everything is player driven. You can't buy food from NPC's only players. And the gear that NPC sell suck. The first recipies for any item are better than NPC junk.

Take on a Crafting skill! Go get all 5 Gathering skills! Pick up all the nodes and craft all the things! Then once you've got some awesome stuff to sell, or some okay stuff to sell, set up shop over night go get rich!

Lastly go do Dungeons.

Finally going into instances such as Twilight Village(Located in Suzhou City)
Offer item drops like Flying Skill books(The Wild Goose Flying skill drops in TV and you should do TV inorder to get it as it's one of the best "flying" skills in the game. Theres a reason why it costs alot and that same reason is the reason you should go get it.)


*Twilight Village Entrance location in Suzhou city. Speak with Uncle Han to enter.
However if manage to get another Goose book... and you hate your team members... and you get it... Sell it! Yay money!

Part 4.5: Discipline [P4.5]

For players located in Good allied schools and the Neutral School Scholars kidnapping is a definite No-No and will earn you discipline points for your school. Now you should worry about this causing you to go full on evil, and you can still kidnap even if you've taken the Constable buff. or players located in Good allied schools and the Neutral School Scholars kidnapping is a definite No-No and will earn you discipline points for your school. Now you should worry about this causing you to go full on evil, and you can still kidnap even if you've taken the Constable buff.

For people wondering what discipline points are they are points where gaining about 100 Discipline points will earn you a Debuff the next time you enter your school. This debuff causes a 20% attack reduction anywhere from 20 Minutes to an hour, or ever several hours if you've been particularly naughty.

The way to remove the debuff and get rid of your penalty points is to "Repent" when repenting you will be in a protection state where noone may attack you and you may not doing anything either. For every 10 Points of discipline you need to remove you must repent for 10 Minutes meaning at 100 Discipline points you must sit there and repent for 1 Hour and 40 Minutes.

You may not be offline while repent you must be online. You may however go afk.

This is deinfetly a down side if you wanted to run about naked, or kill people from your school, or if you're in a School that is considered Good then being a little evil is also annoying because of the penalties you incur however in Age of Wushu you'll be spending alot of time afk anyways and really this shouldn't bother you that much. Unless you're super evil. Then, well, never go back to school.


*Disicpline value can be found in the character window (Default: C) in the bottom tab highlighted above.

Part 5: PVP [P5]

Awwwww yis, time to kill some people.

Yes indeed lets kill people! But lets take a look at all the modes of slaughter and mayhem before we go about brandishing our blades against our enemies necks shall we?

Open PK
It should be no surprise to you that open PK is an option in this game you're warned when you login that this is a PvP game and you should be prepared for alot of butthurt.

You can be killed. Anywhere. Anytime. By anyone. Except in Safe Zones.(Res points.)
Everywhere else is fair game.

If you're a newbie, don't even bother picking a fight with anyone until you know the tiers of power that people can be at. Heres a chart to give you an idea of how painful picking a fight with certain people may be:
http://kojo.enjin.com/forum/m/4049427/viewthread/5320462-power-titles-wtable
Information Provided by KoJo

As you can see in the table linked above, a person who is labeled as Weak Body and Mind, is well weak. Really Weak. But someone labeled say Spiritually Balanced is really strong.(Or well has a higher inner skill level) While these labels may not accurately reflect how powerful the person may be as you don't know what level their skills are and if they have skills from other schools etc, you can't tell but generally if your inners aren't at the same point the person with the Lower inner rank will be at a disadvantage in most situations.

Notes about Open PK: Fighting in an Open PK scenario where you have not initiated a Duel will cause the person who lands the killing blow to gain infamy.
After obtaining a certain amount of infamy that persons name can turn red and infamy will decay at a slower pace. If this person is killed by a constable they will be sent to jail and must either wait several hours to get out or pay bail.

If youre infamy gets absurdly high then you will be sent to jail then after a day or so of being in jail you will be beheaded. After being beheaded if you were not busted out by your friends you will get a 24 hour debuff that will let anyone who wants some revenge get it.


*Infamy level can be seen in the character window(Default: C) in the tab on the right hand side with your stats as seen above.

Escorts
I talked about Escorts being a fine method of obtaining experience, well if you really don't like the guild that is escorting then you're welcome to stop them. By stopping other guilds from completeing escort tasks you prevent their guild from gaining any money to support their guild  hall or just their guild in general and you get a few rewards too(What they are I'm not sure) and you get the satisfaction of knowing you ruined their day and got them really mad.

Guild Wars
Guild Fight eachother. Hit N in game to see when such events are happening.

School Wars
Schools and people who ally with certain schools fight eachother, hit N to see when these events happen. Rewards are minimal.

Patroling & Spying
While patroling, you can Expose spies by getting their detection value to 100, when exposed you may attack them and gain rewards, while a patrol they may fight back. Don't pick fights with people you can't handle Patrol NPC's in schools are pretty weak despite being labled "Unfathomable"

Arenas
When Arena events start you'll have a little glowing icon on your screen come up asking if you'd like to participate in an Arena Battle. This is a 1 v 1 duel and the winner gets a buff that increases EXP conversion rate. Losing also gets a similar buff but not as potent.

Giving Aid in Jianghu

When this message comes up this is a request to be an Assassin in Twilight Village your objective is to stop the players trying to complete the instance from killing the boss by any means nessacery. To do this you must attack the other players and prevent them from killing the boss if you successfully defend the boss for 10 minutes you will be teleported out and you will gain a reward and the memory of trolling 6 people pretty hard.

There are lots of other PvP types and settings and rewards but these are a few I feel you'll encounter often in your travels in Jianghu.

Closing

Thanks for reading!
I hope this guide helps you on your way to becoming a great Age of Wushu Player.
I probably forgot to put in alot of things and perhaps I didn't explain some things very well at all.
I tried my best but as we may be able to tell the games translations are really poor and even I'm confused about alot of things. All MMORPGs are a learning experience and Age of Wushu is no exception. Theres alot to do, alot to discover, and I hope I put you down the right path to playing.

See you in Age of Wushu! 

Yes another new game. :)

I am just getting started on a new game and thought I would have a centralized place for my findings in it. This will be centered around the game Age of Wushu which is a sandbox game that centers around ancient China. It is an MMORPG that is open player versus player and player versus environment in the form of quests and instances. It is also very Martial Arts oriented.

I hope that anyone that follows this blog will find it informative and helpful for them if they decide to explore this game.

Star Wars: The Old Republic

Hmm, /e looks around and taps foot.
"Must get rid of these cobwebs."
/e kicks up some dust.
"Wow, has it been that long?"

In case you can't tell by the name and the lack of posts I have moved on to some different pastures. Now I am running in Swtor and am enjoying it thus far. The story line is awesome and I must admit shooting things with a blaster or slicing things with a light saber are rather refreshing. As of now I am running a Commando Trooper (Skarrde) that is going in heals and a Shadow Consular (Crannoc) that is dps right now but will probably be tank spec.

Yes I know the names have been used before but I enjoy them.

My wife isn't so much getting into it but I much prefer gaming over watching TV so this is where I am. As things come up I will probably post something here, at least I hope so.

Awesome Video

Thanks to Kae from Dreambound for this video. Definitely worth the time to watch.

http://www.youtube-nocookie.com/v/eRsGy ... 2=0x6b8ab6

Great night

Had a blast tonite in ICC, got through the first 4 bosses without too much trouble. Had a new guy come in who hadn't run q lot of raids before so he was pretty excited about going on this one. Had the bow drop off Lady Deathwhisper, splinter of ice dropped for my sister the disc priest, dagger dropped on loot ship and I had the deathforge leggings drop on Saurfang. While I was getting gems and let armor for leggings someone put saranite sword breakers in trade chat so picked those up as well. Have to get a red gem to get my meta gem bonus and get the wide to put greater stm on my braces.

I have set myself up with 2 tanking specs one blood and one frost. Kept the frost since it is one I knew and have familiarize myself with the blood one. Got it from pwnwear.com, very nice site with lots of dk resources especially for tanks, little warning there is some swearing there so wouldn't recommend it to a younger audience. I remember when I went into ICC last week as blood to try it out, wasn't very pretty, felt I as just masking keys and didn't have a plan. Played some heroics this week as blood to get used to it. Totally different story this week, went on and dis the whole first 4 bosses as blood. It isn't quite as smooth to run and you have a lot less air tank available but not bad overall. Will post my blood spec later.

Well time to /logout, u have a good weekend and hope to see you next week.

A good night.

Went into Ulduar for the weekly which was Flame Leviathin(sp). Went pretty smoothly even tho we could only get 8 people for it. Then went into Wintergrasp and held off the Horde to declare a victory there. Will have to setup a bar for pvp as I wasn't having much luck with my Dps bar for blood.

I am really enjoying tanking with my DK and look forward to continuing on with him. Will I make him my main? Doubt it as I have sunk so much work into Airdrigh that I am not willing to give him up yet. I do enjoy the easy playing of not trying for achievements, tho I would like to get glory of a hero at some time. I think it is the only chance I have at a fast proto Drake.

Guild Achievements

Interesting read posted by the wow.com who skimmed thru the WoW forums check it out if your curious about that sorta thing. :)

http://www.wow.com/2010/08/18/cataclysm-beta-guild-advancement-qanda/

The Quiet Before the Storm

I have noticed a definite lull in the game lately. Ruby Sanctum came out and haven't seen a lot of people loading that one up, not like Sunwell was for BC. I almost think people are just getting tired and have been waiting with bated breath for what is to come in Cata. Has Blizz ramped it up too much? I wonder.

I will admit I am looking forward to the changes that are coming and I have enjoyed reading some of the different posts that beta testers have put up but I think they may have flooded the market too soon. Maybe they are worried about people leaving especially with Star Wars: The Old Republic hitting stands some time next year. Maybe they just couldn't keep it in any longer and like giddy little fan bois they wanted to spread the word about their work.

On a toon note, I have been working on Crannoc a lot more lately. I thought I could go back to Airdrigh but there just isn't much of a call for healers as there are for tanks. Could be just me but it seems that every time I queue up for a random as a tank I get in right away. As a healer? Well in no way is the wait time as bad as a DPS but it is still quite long. Not exactly sure why that is but can only assume that people are exploring healing more with their alts than tanks, granted it is much easier to gear up a healer and to go into an instance and heal than it is to tank said instance. I am enjoying tanking and my sister and bro-in-law are getting back into the game so that is helping quite a bit too.

Ah well time to head back into it. Hope to talk to you all again real soon. :)

New Site

Seems Battle.net has been revamped a little, not sure if everyone has it, or if it just happened to me lately or what but must admit I am a little lost without. Ah the joys of change. I keep checking in to see if I have a beta invite yet and so far...no luck. I have been keeping up with some of the changes that are posted on the wow.com site as well as following the pwnwear.com blog whose author is in the beta. FYI pwnwear.com deals with dk tanking which if you don't know has been of interest to me since I leveled Crannoc and have been playing him lately. Just don't see as much call for healers as there are for tanks so figured I would help fill a role that way.

I am a little flighty when it comes to my toons and do have a habit of switching from one to another. I enjoy playing Airdrigh my shaman but like I said not much call for them since it seems that everyone is leveling a healer alt, but not that many want to tank. Did a full clear of ToC last nite that went very smoothly, fastest I have ever gone through there in my whole WoW carreer. Healers and DPS were top on and we only had one wipe that was on the first set of bosses, the pvp part even went smoothly which was unusual. Picked up a tanking ring out of there that was a definite upgrade. Hope to get into ICC with him some time and see how I do against the first 4 bosses minimum.

Side note. Been checking out Tankspot.com, and watching The Weekly Marmot. Pretty informative webcast though a little biased in that one plays a tankadin and the other plays a priest for the most part. They do have some interesting perspectives especially since they are trying out the Beta. Hop over there if you find the time and check it out.

New Talents on MMO-Champion

New talent trees were released tonite in the beta and they posted them up on www.mmo-champion.com at www.wowtal.com. I took a look at them and played around, they still have the points setup for 1 per level so it takes a little planning, just remember you need 31 in the tree you are specializing in and then you get the other 10 whereever you want to put them.

Here is what I am thinking. http://www.wowtal.com/#k=fvvFmh9X.9mn.shaman

New Changes!

Amazing how the game can be in such a flux during beta, and how people can get so perturbed by that fact. I must admit I am very curious how the new talents will shape out, and from the looks of it those in beta are getting a chance to look at it tnite. Hopefully we will have something to play around with by morning. :)

Cata Resto Spec

Was playing around on the wowhead.com talent calculator and have changed the spec that I plan on. This of course is up in the air due to it only just starting beta but thought I would put it out there.

http://cata.wowhead.com/talent#hVZVIZxceuIcoVzRfuAu

Cata NDA Lifted

As I am sure most if not all of you know the NDA has been lifted and Cataclysm has moved into the Closed beta. How does this affect me? Not much, I will keep playing my Shaman and DK, though I am curious to see the changes to DK tanking since it is supposed to be down the Blood Tree. I will say that I applied for my guild for the 10 player contest they had going on earlier, highly doubt we will get invited but one can always hope.

Side note I got Crannoc into ToCr on Monday for the weekly Raid and did ok at tanking it. Was with a warrior who had prot as his 2ndary. Died on the worms when they had gotten loose and I pulled them both on me til the warrior could pick them up. The raid then burnt the worms down and the next boss. Lord Jarraxus was interesting as I was the OT and picked up the maidens and the infernals as best I could. Got a nice pair of bracers out of there, running a fair amount of randoms on him yet.

The Beginning and the End. Hmm Sounds Dramatic

Had an interesting night last night. Got home from work around 1035, 1040 at night, gave the wife a kiss we chatted and then grabbed a couple of glasses with some mature drinks in them and headed downstairs to the office to load up the game. Loaded up Ventrillo and first thing I saw were that our friends were logged in along with another guildie who has been missing due to playing something else (thbbbtp.) Said hello and loaded up my lvl 72 warlock to help my friends. I get in and ask them so what do you want to do? They were a little indecisive so I asked do you want to run the instance for Howling Fjord which is where they are leveling. "Sure!" I get so we all get ready, I ask my wife to load up someone to fill out the role we needed here, she brings her lock as well.

We queue up using the LFD going for UK in particular and zone into the instance. Buffs, cookies and soulstone done and time to start. Our group comprised of 2 level 68 druids, healer and tank, a 68 unholy dk, a 72 affliction lock and a 73 destro lock, interesting group. First pull, no problem we get the 2 guys down. Second pull we wipe due to some inexperience with tanking and healing. Come back in, take them down and move smoothly onto the forge area. We get the first pull off pretty well, 2nd pull healer wasn't ready when the tank went in and we ended up wiping after I manage pull aggro, stupid DoTs. Needless to say this is so much different than running the heroics that I have been doing on my shaman which is basically a face roll. We make it up to the first boss after working on the healing rotation for the druid and some cooldowns for the tank. We try to take the boss down but can't quite coordinate the group to make it happen, also I think we need to work on leveling up the 68s to 70 and see if we can find them some good gear to use as well. Since we were power leveling them through Vanilla and BC content I think they missed out on some of the good gear for their level. Once they hit 70 I am planning on running them through Kara with my DK and see what drops in there.

That was the beginning.

We then get invited into a pug for ICC, loaded up my shaman for healing and the wife loaded up her shadow priest, took a little bit to finally get the party together but worked it out in the end. Raid was 2 shaman, resto and ele, 2 hunters, 2 pallies, holy and prot, 2 dks, frost and blood, a mage and a shadow priest. Not too bad, mostly casters but that is what I am used to. We moved in and things went smooth, only 2 healers, Holy pally was keeping the tanks up while I took care of the raid and back up healed the tanks. Made it through 2nd boss, Lady Deathwhisper I believe and pally tank d/c'd, he loaded back up into our vent and tried logging into wow and wouldn't let him at the game servers. I remembered running into this before so told him to do a ipconfig /release, /renew that worked and we were off again, it did take us about 15 min to get it all figured out and to get him back into the game. Got through the ship part and hit Saurfang, he was like a brick wall, we just couldn't quite get him down, wipe 1, wipe 2, wipe 3, I had been up since 8 the previous morning and 3am was coming on fast, wipe 4, "Ok guys I am going to have to call it a night.", "No please just one more time we can get him.", "Ok one more and that is it.", we take him down. Everything just seemed to pull together right and made it through pretty well.

Thus ends my story of the Beginning (Utgarde Keep) and the End (ICC). Take it for how you will. Laters all and keep your stick on the ice.

Cataclysm Talent Preview

Blizzard released the talent trees for a few classes yesterday and I did some playing around with the shaman one on cata.wowhead.com/talent this morning. Now I know that it is still in beta and they will probably change it before the actual release but thought I would put out where I would put my talents.

http://cata.wowhead.com/talent#hxZVI0oZv0ezIeoVzRfuio:qAicmM

Tell me what you think.

Moving to a new House

Moved to our new house today. Will be closing on it in a few days but needed to get out of our old one so we could get it cleaned up and ready for the new owners. Interesting thing moving, especially when you move into a house that isn't quite ready for you. Now we have to work on getting the basement finished off so that we can have our office/computer room down there along with the family room and such. Looks like WoW is going to be put on hold for at least a week if not 2, especially since we have to unpack boxes and build furniture back up.

Hope you all have a good weekend and a happy Easter next week.

Movin on Up! To the Middle Side?

Finished Howling Fjord and Borean Tundra along with the various instances there. Started in Dragonblight and did the An'Kahet instances there too through randoms or using the LFG interface. I am really liking this thing as it makes it so much easier to get into instances. You don't have to wait at the stone to get the people you need for it, and there is such a big pool to choose from. Glad Blizzard came up with it.

Anywho! Made a slight change to my rotation due to the amount of burst damage that is out there. Seems people don't like to wait for the tank to get aggro, they are just interested in topping the damage meters (wish they had never invented those sometimes.) I now go into a fight using icy touch>pestilence>Howling Blast>blood boil with Frost Strikes in between. I find this gets the initial aggro that I need to hold. While it is still possible for the dps to pull off of me they don't do it quite as easily. If it is a single target then I go in with Icy Touch>Plague Stike>Howling Blast> Blood Boil>Blood Boil.

A Slight Change

Due to some RL issues and being burnt out with healing I have decided to turn to the other end of the spectrum. I built myself a Death Knight and am working on leveling him up to be a tank. So on to the juiciness that is being stabbed over and over again.

Name: Crannoc
Spec: Blood/Frost
Purpose: Tank

There isn't a lot of guides out there for tanking with a D/K along with blogs. Hope to come across a few to help me out otherwise it will be trial by fire. I have noticed in the few instances I have run that it is hard to hold aggro against a lot of the people using randoms. Seems everyone is either used to playing with over geared people or with pally tanks. I had an especially difficult time trying to hold aggro against a ret pally who insisted on running with his righteous fury on. Needless to say I left that group pretty quickly when they weren't interested in actually letting me do the role I had asked for when loading. Maybe it was petty of me, maybe not but I do feel the need to have experience and I won't get it by being the dps instead of the tank.

Here is the build I am planning on when I hit 80 along with the glyphs. Icy Reach may not be necessary but I figure all the help I can get is a good thing. Current rotation is go in with Icy Touch followed by Pestilence to spread Frost Fever and then Howling Blast, follow this with Blood Boil until your blood runes are gone. Get a plague strike in along with another icy touch and keep them rolling along with Frost strike. Not the simple fighting that you get when doing dps as blood, keeps you on your toes for sure.

Will post the macros I use next time I get in.