Gitr

Last night was pretty much an all-around good night. I logged in at Panera waiting for dinner and journeyed to Feathermoon in Feralas so I’d be where I wanted to grind when I got home.

Once home, I took Gitr to the Scar Yetis to the North and fought them for a little while and then Inebriate logged in and we got a group together to go to Zul’ Farrak. My first trip to the legendary ZF. We had a 49 Warlock, 45 priestess, 45 mage, 41 rogue, and Gitr at 46. It seemed a bit cumbersome for me because, for the first time ever, I was in a group with 3 male humans without a helmet. It was very hard for me to tell the difference from Gitr and Homerjay, and several times I was behind the mob facing the wrong way thinking that I was controlling the toon that I could see in front of the mob. This was largely due to the cape he was wearing looks exactly like the one that I wore for about 12 levels.

Aside from that, things progressed pretty smoothly and Gitr was taking over 60% of the damage. We did have a pretty sticky situation at one point where we drew a few adds when we were just trying to go around everyone to get on with the quests.

We got to an area with dozens of scarab beetles and one 46 elite troll doing laps around a stone block. It got ugly. About 10 of those beetles decided to attack when we assaulted the troll, who had a very wicked spear thrust. Being the tank and up in someone’s grill, I never really see the whole thing, but about a minute into the melee, Inebriate, Rani (priestess), and the rogue were all dead. It was only a matter of time before I dropped, and I did, about 20 seconds later. He was TOUGH at like-level, already at 30% health. I couldn’t break this last block of health to save my life, so I died. Rani resurrected me, then Homerjay (warlock), and as I saw her hands go up for the next one, I saw the troll round the corner. I tried putting on a runecloth bandage as fast as I could, and didn’t quite get up to full health. I aggroed him since I was with 2 squishies. I kept him busy and tried to let Homer do as much damage as he wanted, and Rani to heal me for the rest of the fight, but they were both out of mana within 15 seconds. Not good. I went down and watched them fight valiently. Homer finally downed him with a sliver of life left, but not until Rani dropped and we all had to run back.

Then we made it to the top of the temple thing and released a prisoner. That was the end of our playing well. We fought the fight too close to the stairs (probably because Inebriate was talking to me on TeamSpeak and we went to look down at all the mobs) and never moved them back to the platform. The first 5 elites were all ranged attackers, so I wasn’t able gain aggro without going down the stairs, which was expressly forbidden. We handled about 6 or 8 waves of single elites with three 46s. Then we all died. The instance reset, and we decided to call it off. Too bad I only needed one more Troll Temper for my quest.

‘Neb and I headed to the pirate cove to the East and get Stoley’s Shipment. I turned it in and had to pick up the screecher spirit quest again because I tossed the wand last week because I had all 3 spirits. Ooops.

It was time to mount up and ride to Feralas to pick up the elven gryph point. I flew the rest of the way to Feathermoon and headed to the Scar Yetis again. I realized after a couple of minutes that the amount of time it took to drop one was not a high enough xp reward to warrant the time. Gitr needed easier prey, so he took off to the Feral and Rage Yetis again. That is really becoming a favorite grinding spot. They are fast, skinnable, and repop fast enough for 2 to be in the cave at the same time. I even got an uber-drop about half-way through my remaining xp bar: [Sheepshear Mantle]. It ended up selling within 5 minutes for nearly 18g. That alone paid for all the expenses for the night, AND I finished with 18 stacks of heavy and thick leather to sell. Yes, it was a lot of grinding. The last hour was just loot and charge, loot and charge, bandage, loot and charge.

Gitr went all over Azeroth tonight, grinding, questing, PvPing, and into Maraudon for a 5-man.

I’ll process the screenshots tonight and post tomorrow morning. I have put up most of the posts since Miss Anti-guns, as it will be mentioned again in the morning. This time it’s just downright funny.

On a personal note, I have 3 interviews tomorrow for the computer department at work, starting at 10am. I hope to bring back good news of that before our week-long shut-down for the end of the year.

WordPress rocks!!!!

I can manage the numerous templates, I love the styles available, and the posting is easy. I uploaded all the previous pictures, so now I just need to put up the posts and re-link the pics. Not long now!

I am VERY happy with the look of the blog, but I need to “WoW-ize” it to my taste and add all the cool things that I spent hours upon hours tweaking and adding.

I was really trying to get the blog going on a new domain this week, but the comments aren’t working correctly. It’s a MovableType host, and there are just too many templates and a very sluggish forum admin. I can’t even ask for help.

Sooo… when I get home, I’m going to install WordPress to see if I can get that running OK and start co-publishing the blog on both spots until I can get my cool stuff working. I’m not quite sure how to transfer all my tracking and BlogShares stuff over yet so I don’t lose traffic. As one tesimonial for WP said, “Outstanding work. Installation was extremely smooth and easy — and it actually works, compared to my bad experience with MovableType. Got me up and running in nearly 10 minutes.”
Looking forward to it with much anticipation.

It will take a while to get it to look the way I want, so I won’t be publishing the URL until it’s ready for the demands of the high-quality audience that I know you are.

Gitr will be doing a SM run tonight as main tank, so I should have lots of good screens and tales of heroism tomorrow.

I put up a long update on Friday, since most of you checked back in on Wednesday and Thursday. Nothing much happened since Friday because Gitr’s creator became an old fogey.

Friday was a big surprise with going to Circe du Soleil! I took the day off and relaxed, spent 2 hours doing the blog, did laundry, and then was amazed by the sights, sounds, and humor of the show. I have no idea what was really going on with the story line because we didn’t spend $13 for the program. I’ll have to look it up later. Somehow I gathered that the guy and girl got married in the last 20 minutes. Why? I haven’t got a clue. I have to find out what was up with the lightbulb helmet dude.

Anyhooo… Saturday was more relaxing and getting ready for the Company Christmas Dinner/Dance. I had to go into town (drive into Tampa from the ‘burbs) to pick up my shirt from the tailor shop. I had the sleeves shortened and the sides brought in so it didn’t look like I was wearing a tent. Then I got a bright red silk tie at Wal-Mart, a new undershirt, and took my girlfriend her new 18K white gold necklace to go with her black dress for that evening. The dinner was great, kind of lonely, though. I was representing my department because no one else wanted to go, and I’ve only been her 5 months. I recognized people, but didn’t really have anyone to talk to, so we did a lot of people watching. 🙂

Sunday was rather cool for December and was rainy half the day, but I didn’t mind. My best bud got me a Barnes & Noble gift card (w00t!) and my parents a Circuit City gift card (double w00t). My girlfriend broke our birthday rule and got me something anyway. We made arrangements our first year that birthdays are for a special activity and dinner, no gifts allowed. We’ve broken that EVERY birthday so far. Well, when you love someone that much, I guess you should go the extra mile on their birthday. *grin* She got me the belt I wanted from Old Navy and ’24 Declassified’ and Grisham’s ‘The Broker’ novels. I’m in hour three already of ’24.’

With all of that going on, Gitr is still level 45 and may level tonight. My girlfriend is opening today, and closing the rest of the week because she took the whole weekend off. Normally she’d get one day off in there. So, I’ll have plenty of evening time to grind and quest for numerous updates to write on this boring, boring week.

Whew, what a fight to get from 44 to 45 in one night! I did it. 107,000xp in one night, with only the rest from the night before. The night started with a freaky suprise of what the Winter Veil looks like. Christmas lights everywhere and a queue formed leading up to Father Winter. Quite funny. I did a couple of quests within IF while I was tending to my auctions. One of them brought up a quest for “The Reason for the Season.” I was initially put out that Blizzard might attempt to poke fun at such an important religious celebration, but I decided to follow it through to the end to see what they made of it, much like watching the Charlie Brown Christmas Special, one of the greatest Hollywood Christmas risks ever.

While I wasn’t offended by the quest, my hope of a good message that the first screen from Karnik was quickly dashed with his second screen. Oh well. It’s a game, like I say. On to killing, I also say. LOL.

My charge last night from Tox was to go to Tanaris and head West to an island for some quests killing beasts and ogres. I had quite the adventure in my travels when I started to run through a skull-level orc camp and had to jump 200 feet down into a lake. After I made my way back to the road, I saw where the big island was and headed left off the road, down at least a 100 foot drop. It took 80% of my life. I bandaged up and looked around to get my bearings again. I saw level 49 water elementals that Tox warned me about. Crap. I’m in the wrong area. Looking at the map again, I can see the dock, 1/4 mile northwest. I made a run for it and made it. The swim was as advertised, “doable,” and I got my quests to kill ogres. I never did get ones for beasts. Next time, I guess.

I died a few times from drawing adds while I was fighting 2 levels above me, which is usually a recipe for disaster for a warrior. At least after the only Retaliation for 30 minutes, that is. Soon Inebriate joined me to kill Shamans. I had just wiped out the only 2 I saw, so we slaughtered everything else. He had to leave within 5 minutes of us joining up with another warrior, a level 46 named Hooahdooah. The two of us needed several Shaman, so we stuck with it and killed about 25 ogres and went to turn in. I never got a screenshot of our ogre fights, so we did a photo session South of the village.

After all that, I was ready for a change of scenery, so I got on a couple of gryph points to get to Tanaris again. I saw about 5 quests in Gadgetzan that I hadn’t seen before. I had a lot of humanoids to kill in the flats before the cove of pirates that I went to level for 44. I killed all of them, and got the water bottles, but still needed to find Caliph. I found out where he was supposed to be, but he wasn’t there. I figured he was another one of those wandering types. So I waited. Then he showed up and was only a 46. GREAT. I charged and 2 lvl 46 rogues unstealthed from beside him. I (stupidly) forgot to take a health potion in time and died. By the time I got back, he was gone and no where close. Probably finished off by someone else, I figured. So I waited again. After a while, a N.E. rogue asked if I was killing assassins and mages. I told him I was only killing Caliph and moving on to other things. We grouped and finally decided to mount up and ride toward one of the mountains to look for him. You can see he was no match when we did find him. We actually killed him 3 times. I went to turn in the quests and the one for the assassins and mages became available, along with another for 5 more water bottles. I went back and we grouped again for about 20 minutes.

I still had a long way to go for 45, so I just started killing 44-47 beasts everywhere I saw a good density. I hit 300 skinning in all that *fun! I had my biggest crit hit ever. I’ve hit 600s before with really big heroic strikes with buffs and Booming Voice, but this one takes my cake. Eventually even that got boring, so I headed to the cove again. Along the way, I discovered the instance that will be added later with the level 50 elite dragon guarding the entrance. I went along to coast to try to swim straight into the fort, but danger pushed me back the way I came. There were level 50 turtles and two of these level 49 elite dudes.

I killed in the cove for a while, but there was too much competition to get a groove on. It was just too much running. I hearthed to IF to unload and get more healing potions and some runecloth for bandages. I knew what I had to do: go to Badlands and kill as fast as possible. I wasn’t even skinning (no point now except $$) the carcasses, but I was looting them if there were any lowbies around looking to get skill points for skinning them. I finally dinged, hearthed, and went to bed.