Level Your Cooking NAO

Seriously – this pilgrim holiday thing is the fastest and cheapest you’ll ever get a toon’s cooking to 300+.  Even if you hate cooking – you should seriously give it a try.  In about a half an hour I put 2-3 of my best loved alts up to 300+ cooking for negligible cost and minimal effort.

There’s a part of me that is kinda burnt up about all the time and effort that went into getting Rain’s cooking to max – but that burn is being overwhelmed by the smell of all the great things my alts are cooking up.

A guide?  Seriously?  Just go buy the cookbook from the pilgrim vendor and start making stuff.  That’s all there is to it!

I took a level 26 alt with a “1” in cooking to 300+ in no time.  The longest part of the entire process was traveling to the different cities to pick up up the location specfic mats from the pilgrim vendors.  If you have a mage friend – you can even avoid that!

So get to cooking!

Stone Guard – only 500 Arena Points

Caught this this the other day from a Russian gaming site (don’t ask) – surprised the daylights out of me.  Not sure how Stone Guard Tigerclaw feels about it:

If you have Arena points, you should spend them on something epic! Among the possible rewards, the most exciting will be the return of the classic honor titles like Grand Marshal or Knight Lieutenant. Players will also be able to earn epic ground mounts and vanity items such astabards and pets in addition to helping their guild acquire levels and achievements.

I have to say – using your arena points for in game goodies isn’t a bad thing.  What gets me is that the titles are part of it.  There’s a great deal of good sense in this when I think about it – but the old school WoW guy in me cringed….

Just a little…

Best Hunter in the World…

The guys over at OutDPS have a pretty great interview of Kripparrian on their latest podcast.  I recommend anyone that is of a hunterly mindset to take a listen.

Kripparrian for those of you that don’t know (as I surely didn’t) – puts out more dps than any two hunters you know.  He’s scored the arena gladiator title multiple times and he has more money than all of  your toons combined have ever even dreamed of.  In short – as Euripides claims during the interview – Kripparrian has “won wow”.

But once you get over his ridonkulous dps (in the high 9k territory in many fights) and his incredible cosmic wealth – there’s a great deal to learn and potentially apply to your own game play.

I’m not going to retell a good story so I’ll just send you off to OutDPS for the podcast.  Once you’re done there – take a look at Kripparrian’s YouTube channel.  He’s posted high quality videos of everything from his guilds 25 man heroic take downs of different bosses to how to succeed in the jewelcrafting market of your server.  The videos are well done – very clear – and very useful.  I’m a visual guy – I learn best through a combination of doing and watching others – so these videos are excellent.

Just by following how Kripp’ manages his shot cool downs – when he uses volley and some of his very smooth – very accurate uses of disengage have me looking forward to the next time I’m able to raid.  I can’t wait to take what I’ve learned and start applying it.

Laws of Loot

Ran across this on the official forums in a QQ thread about how bad the random loot is in 5 man Heroic ToC.  I made a couple of slight adjustments to reflect reality as I know it:

Krym’s Rules of Loot Droppage

Rule 1:

If you need it, it won’t drop.

Rule 2:

When it drops, you won’t need it.

Rule 3:

If it drops, and you need it, you won’t win it.

Rule 4:

If it drops, and you need it, some Death Knight will need it too and win it…

Rule 5:

If it drops, and you need it, and you win it, and you get it, then please see rule Rule 1 for whatever else you need.

—

Rain’ had terrible luck in the 5 man trial.  In all the runs she’s made – not one time did Marrowstrike (or anything else vaguely useful) ever drop.  Thank goodness for a good guild and ToC-10.  That place has been a blessing.  It’s not that hard – the loot is excellent and best of all?

No jousting.

Faction Changing Back

This is a service announcement more than anything else – as I just don’t have time to write more.

The subject: Faction Changing – then Faction Changing *back* to where you started.

Just what happens?

First off – you’re out $30 – again.

Second – things look pretty much like they did before the change – only better.

I fully expected – nay – had *resigned* myself to having to grind my Crusader title back for the 3rd time.  But upon “waking up” in Thunderbluff and taking a quick assessment of things…it was all there.  My Crusader title – all of my previous achievements from the trial of the champions – all of it.

Whew.

I’d even broken the 1500 quest achievement thanks to the fact that it appears that when they faction changed me back – they simply rolled me back to where I was – and added in everything non faction specific I had completed while exploring the lands of Azeroth on the “pretty” side.

So wow – yeah.  What a relief.

Why did I change back?  Did I come to my senses and realize the Alliance were a bunch of noob-kids?  Hardly.  As usual – I found the folks I met to be pretty much just like the ones on the Horde side.  The crew at Veritas are some of the best I’ve met in game and remind me a lot of the folks I know on Twisting Nether in the guild Forge.  All good people – great players – regardless of faction.

No in this case – I have multiple jobs (civilian and military) – and one of them is getting ready to start taking up a bit more of my time.  Nothing dramatic – no year long vacation to the sand or anything.  Just busy.   I let my guild leader know that I was probably not going to be about a great deal and that I was going to pull Rain’ out until things settled down.  Being a former Infantry guy himself – he understood and sent me on my way with a dwarven blessing and a fine mug of seasonal ale.

Rain’ going back to the Horde side was simply an act of comfort.  I’m comfortable there – I miss it – and with me in and out of the game I want my kids to be able to play on my account.  What I don’t need is one of them doing something unintentionally bone headed and having the guild take the heat for it.  Plus – Rain’ can give them money and heirloom items for their army of alts and my evil spawn prefer the horde for whatever it’s worth.

Anyway – back to the grindstone here – safe travels!