Blizzcon coming soon

I’m a little concerned about Blizzcon.

I’ve been watching Blizzcon for many years. It has always been a source of excitement and entertainment. Not only were there always great game-related announcements, but we got to see guys like Chris Metzen, Mike Morhaime, Greg Street, and Alex Afrasiabi geeking out over their creations. We have seen Elite Tauren Chieftan bang on their instruments and a guy in a red shirt stump the authors of the game’s lore.

With the recent spate of departures among some of the senior designers at the game, I think we will be seeing a lot of different faces at Blizzcon this year. No longer will Metzen greet us with his geeky introductions in his distinctive voice. Will Morhaime still show up on stage?

So without the familiar personalities, and with no sign of any big announcements, I worry that this year’s event will be very corporate. Rather than a celebration of the game itself, it will be more of a toast to its success, and an emphasis on e-sports. While that is still admirable, that’s not what people pay all that money to see.

I am hoping that I am surprised. Maybe they have a trick or two up their sleeve.

Leatherworking Mount Quest

I got to the point in Leatherworking where I was given the quest “Mounting Made Easy”. In this, you have to put a leash on a wild Great Northern Elderhorn and follow it as it runs throughout Stormheim.

First – the quest itself takes a long time. Even if you were to nail it on the first attempt (a near impossibility) it would run 10-15 minutes of chasing this thing. With failures and restarts, it took me about 45 minutes total. I did not watch any videos or guides before doing it.

It is challenging. It is also a bit too long. It was fun at first, but then it got a bit frustrating. If it had been about half the length it was, then the annoying aspects would have been offset by the joy of accomplishment upon finishing.

The quest is clearly not meant to be done on the first try. There are times that the Elderhorn makes jumps that the player cannot possibly make – leaping up onto a rock or jumping across a chasm. In these cases, the player is bound to fail the first time. Good players will then explore and try and find solutions before trying again. Lazy players will complain.

(As an aside, this has caused no end of whining on official and unofficial WoW forums. The tears of entitlement pouring from those pages could fill an ocean.)

Three things that I found were extremely helpful:

1. Fighter Chow. You will get attacked while you run, and you will sometimes take fall damage. Obviously, if you die then you fail. Fighter Chow increases your out-of-combat regeneration rate.
2. Class Order Hall armor set two-piece bonus. This also increases your out-of-combat regeneration.
3. Stonehide Leather Barding. This is made by leatherworkers, and keeps you from being dismounted while riding.

There are a couple of tricky moments in the run. Fortunately, when you fail you don’t have to start from the beginning. There are checkpoints along the way. After a failure, look on your map for the location of the quest and you’ll get to restart there.

• Tricky moment #1 – the waterfall. There are four jumps down the water fall. On the last, the Elderhorn jumps way up in the air before coming back down. You can’t jump that high. So if you jump at the same time as the Elderhorn, you’ll reach the ground long before it does and the leash will break. Wait a moment after it jumps before you jump.
• Tricky moment #2 – After you jump down some rocks to the river near Cullens Post, going back uphill from there is tricky. The Elderhorn will run around the right side of the path and then make a sudden jump. You can’t make that jump, so if you follow it you will fail here. As the Elderhorn runs around he right side of the path, you go up the path staying as close to it as possible. When it jumps up you’ll be there waiting.
• Tricky moment #3 -Hellmouth Shallows. The Elderhorn will zig zag in and out of the islands. You will end up with a small army of Vyrkul chasing you and attacking you. It is very possible for you to die here. You’ll have to maneuver to try and avoid as many attacks as possible without getting too far from your Elderhorn.

After running around Hellmouth Shallows there comes a point when the Elderhorn jumps to the top of a tall rock. I panicked there and ran around the rock and broke the leash. Don’t do that! This is the end of the quest. Just get close enough to the rock for the quest to complete.

New patch makes Legion more alt-friendly

Earlier this week I mentioned that I was behind the progression on my rogue because I’ve been playing alongside my wife, and she hasn’t had much playtime.

Here comes patch 7.1 to save me!

In the patch, if you have one character who has unlocked World Quests the original way – by reaching Friendly rep with the 5 main factions – then it will also unlock World Quests on your alts shortly after they reach 110. No need to finish the rep requirements!

I logged into my rogue the other day, intending to spend time fishing, and POP I got my whistle and could do World Quests. This allows me to develop that character, but I am not progressing the storyline quests farther than my wife’s character. I’m getting some gear, artifact power, and order hall resources. None of that prevents my wife and I from questing in Azsuna and Suramar together.

Legion – Intro Quests – Subtlety Rogue

I finally got around to doing the Sub Rogue artifact quest. I had put it off because I’ve been leveling my rogue alongside my wife, and I didn’t want to get ahead of her in XP by doing extra quests.

I thought the Sub rogue artifact quest was pretty epic, but too short.

SPOILERS

The visit to the Underbelly, the cut scene with SI:7, these all had good rogue flavor. Then at the end, when Kil’jaeden showed up, I had the biggest grin. I thought that was much more impactful than some of the other artifact quests I’ve done.

The down side for me was that it was really quick. At one point, when we teleported to the citadel, the quest text said that I can use my rogue skills to reach the target. This sounded like a good old-fashioned stealth mission! However, I just sprinted once and ran past the non-aware mobs and I was there in a few seconds. I was hoping for more.

It was easy. Was the fact that I did it at level 110 a reason that it seemed so easy? Still –  a good, epic-feeling experience.

Woefully Behind

I still think of my rogue as my main, even though I have not had a chance to play him much.

With the new patch coming out today, I look at where I stand. My rogue still has not even entered Suramar, and so has not done any World Quests and is still not geared enough to even run heroic dungeons. This is because I’ve been playing that character alongside my wife, and she doesn’t have much playing time at this time of the year.

So I won’t be going into Karazhan or the Trial of Valor raid on my rogue “main” any time soon.

I do have another max level character – my Arcane Mage. He has finished most of his Order Hall questline and is at Artifact Knowledge level 8. He has item level 845 and has run some heroics (but not mythics). Still haven’t killed Xavius, even on LFR, but that’s just been due to time constraints.

I could run raids, mythics, and Karazhan on my mage, but I’m still not really comfortable with the Arcane Mage rotation in raids. I run out of mana too quickly and haven’t mastered the conserve/spend routine. In many fights I do big damage early in the fight, and then fade as my mana dwindles and Evocation is on cooldown. We’ll see what today’s class balancing brings.

So that’s it. I’m not complaining that the content is coming too fast. This is purely a result of my current play schedule.

Fishing Raid

I’ve always been a fishing enthusiast in WoW. I won the Stranglethorn Fishing Extravaganza back in the day. I get almost every fishing achievement (still haven’t caught the fish in Ironforge or Orgrimmar or the rat in Dalaran).

So, looking for something to do in game while semi-afk, I decided to check out fishing in Legion.

I found that there is a guy (Conjurer Margoss) who sells a pet and mount, but you have to grind reputation with him. the only way to get rep is to fish up Drowned Mana in the pool on his floating island near Dalaran. (you get there by gliding off Dalaran near the pet battle, or by fishing up a special item in the Dalaran sewers)

Problem is, the drop rate for Drowned Mana is fairly low, and you need nearly a thousand of them to get your rep up.

However, every so often you’ll fish up an item that allows you to summon a rare creature in the fishing pond. Kill him, and for the next two minutes you will get 1-2 Drowned Mana on every cast.

Doing this yourself is very slow, since the Emblems only come up once in a long while. Enter the fishing raid.

Through the group finder, I got into a raid group with 30-40 people fishing at Conjurer Margoss’ pool. With that many people fishing, it takes very little time for someone to fish up one of the Emblems and summon the monster. There is nearly 100% uptime on the buff that causes you to get Drowned Mana on every cast. Thus, you can get your reputation up much more quickly.

Its still a bit of a slog, but that’s always been the case with fishing.

Conjurer Margoss also sells Arcane Bait, which will be useful when pursuing the artifact fishing pole.