The Plague

So, I've been barely keeping up with the beginnings of the battle between the Argent Dawn and the coming Scourge of the Lich King. I guess now that you kinda have to keep up. I ran into Orgrimmar this weekend, before the arrival of the Necropolis's and became infected, and I could not find someone to cleanse me before I turned into a Zombie. So I kept running towards the Flight Master and headed off to Silithus. I didn't make it. Somewhere near the edge of the Thousand Needles I died and rezed at the bottom of the great lifts. Arrggghh.... !!

So I've decided that I will now avoid the cities, and where possible Shatt as well. I really think the idea of what Blizz is doing here is great. It's a captivating introduction to the new expansion but it very annoying. My bank toon has been hijacked by this crap several times now as I've been trying to post up my excess drops in the AH and manage my trade items there. And it's seems too, at least on our server, that the 'Scourge' has effectively shut down the AH. I've only sold 1/10th of what I usually sell in a weekend because everyone is either off killing zombies or avoiding the cities all toghether. Were I 70, this may be a littel different, espescially since the reward gear is actually really nice, even if it designed for the slaughter of the undead.

I am nearing level 62 and I think I have only about 20 or so quests left to do in Hellfire. I have already picked up the travel quest for Zangermarsh and I am fixing to head off to there and set up my FP for there. I also made the run to Shatt to get the FP there as well as to decide upon what sub-faction I will work with. I went Scryer. I have chosen this faction since I already have 2 toons on the Alliance side thart are Aldor. Plus Scryer seems to match up a little better for my spec and what I want to do with Zulu. Depending upon what level I am when Lich King arrives, will have an impact on how far I will take this relationship. Honestly, I feel I will be in Northrend long before my Outlands factions offers me much in the way of gear and such.

I am now searching for a good cunning pet and an exotic pet. I haven't decided up either. I know that I want to eventually have a wasp as a pet but other than that I haven't decided upon what to get. Most of the horde hunters I've seen so far have their hounds from Shadowmoon Valley or they have their Devilsaur's. I'm not particularly fond of either. Although I have thought about invading Azuremyst Isle and getting the Kurken. I am still researching all of this as I want to make sure that I get the exotic pet that I want or close to it from the beginning.

Anyways, happy hunting all
Zuluki

Level 60 - Hooray

I completed 4 quests last night in Hellfire and turned them in and 'Ding!', I hit 60!

I was a little surprised. I only played for about 40 minutes and had no intentions of making another level. But, hey, it is another level closer to where I want to be on November 13th. So this morning I hearthed back to Orgrimmar and trained and everything else that I needed to do and found that I am about 100g short of my epic mount. No biggy there, I just sent my bank alt a bunch more stuff and cranked up my AH items for the weekend. Then I ran off to Wintergrasp to finish a few old quests there and to grind for 'Rugged Leather,' so that I can bring my leather working up to the 300 mark. I am only 15 pts away from that so I'll be heading back to do some more grinding there until I have enough leather to hit 300 or better. I don't mind the short break to grind over here for while because it is allowing me to level my gorilla up again and to improve my AoE farming skills. I love being able to round up 2 to 4 mobs and dropping volley twice and seeing all of the dead. :D

I find I am missing out a little in the AoE experience given that I do not have Misdirect yet. With the addition of this shot I feel I'll definitely be able to handle even more mobs. This makes me a little more anxious about hitting 70. One thing though, thanks to the article below from the "Aspect of the Hare" blog, using Aspect of the Beast while dealing with multiple mobs has pretty much insured that I do not have any mobs running after me very often. I'm a little surprised that the boost in damage this Aspect gives generates enough threat to ensure that most mobs will stay on my gorilla for the duration of the fight. I am eager now to finish levelling my Gorilla and get back to Outlands to keep going now and to see how he does there.

Slogging Away & Questions on Threat and Aggro.

As I have been racing about Hellfire Peninsula one thing I have noticed here more than I noticed in Azeroth is aggro issues. I am currently using my Ferocity pet (a cat) Jujukitty, for the purpose of killing the mobs faster. Given that I am often times fighting mobs my level or a level or two higher, I find that I am pulling aggro off my pet much more often that I have in the past. Part of this I know has to do with the level of the mobs I dealing with. The other part, I believe, has to do with the Outlands in general. I feel that the mobs in the Outlands respond differently than mobs in Azeroth, and have a much more sensitive setting for aggro. I am also looking more closely at the pet talents and the differences in how the Tenacity and Ferocity talents work.

Threat is a definite tangible aspect now when I'm dealing with mobs, and more so when I am dealing with multiple mobs. I'm seriously considering swiitching to my gorilla for a while to see if this makes a difference. If the gorilla can hold aggro better it will be worth slowing down a little because that will mean that I can apply more damage personally on the targets instead of having to kite, maneauver and trap so much. Interestingly enough, as I've been working this over in my head and trying different things with my cat in game, I found this on another blog this morning;

Aspect of the Beast, An Unlikely Love Story

I have noticed the tooltip change recently but I also didn't pay close attention to it. More pet damage!!! This may make using my gorilla even more useful and quicker when I have Aspect of the Beast up. I'll do some testing tonight to see how this works and play around some with my pets as well. Hopefully by the end of the night tonight I'll hit level 60 and can then finish getting my epic mount.

Unless I can get an escort, I'm going to wait till I have my epic mount to make a run for Shattrath city. Somehow I can't stomach paying a mage to port me there so I'll just have to make a run there soon. With the epic mount it shouldn't be that hard to keep enough speed to stay away from any higher level mobs I might aggro.

Till then,
Happy Hunting
Zuluki

To Hellfire and Beyond

So I hit level 58 and have crossed the Dark Portal into the Outlands. I have visited Thrallmar and gotten myself aquainted to the surroundings of this place. So my adventuring will be limited to the Peninsula and Silithus from here on out until I finish Silithus and then move on through the Outlands. To say I'm excited is an understatement, I'm estatic and only wish that I could have found a better bow to enter the Outlands with. One of my first quests in the Outlands has a crossbow as a reward, so maybe I'll have to snag that and spend some time at the target dummies leveling my crossbow skill up to use the darn thing.

So where does all of this leave me? Well, for one I have skipped a lot of higher level content in Azeroth. I will completely skip the Plaguelands (both east and west), the Burning Steppes, and I will probably not finish the rest of the quests for Winterspring. I do want to keep going to Silithus because of the Cenarion rep as I have mentioned already, but otherwise my adventuring days in Azeroth are done for now. I will probably return at a later day, but not at this moment.

More to come, my pretties, more to come!
Zuluki

Pumpkin Heads, all of them!!!

Okay, so after the patch release and the fact that I missed close to 3 days of playing, I was pretty bummed because I would have been in Outlands by now. This may have turned out to be a good thing though. I have never played a toon that went to Silithus and Zuluki made the excursion. While I have bugs, all I can say is, 'WOW.' This place is great for leveling when your fairly high into the 50's. At the rate I am going, I will probably skip the Plaguelands all together along with Burning Steps. I will finish out my quests in Winterspring and hopefully Silithus and then head off to Outlands. I am really wanting to get my Cenarian Rep up as high as I can before I hit Zangermarsh so I can hopefully either hit Revered or Exalted while I am in that swamp. That will mean staying in Azeroth a little longer than originally planned but I'm okay with that as long as the reward is worth it. I have just under 20 days to cover a minimum of 10 levels, and I have no doubts that I will be ready for Northrend when it releases.

To my amusement and frustration, Hallow's End has arrived. I'm frustrated because a person can be 'pumpkin headed' only so many times before they become annoyed. Or at least that is the way it is with me. I cannot tell you how many times this happened to me this weekend, but everytime I even got near one of the major cities it happened. The fun part of this was I spent some time Sunday running from city to city collecting candy for the xp. I was amazed that after covering all the cities that I could reach I actually made a level from the XP. So what could have been a complete waste of time ended up giving me a level for free.... or almost for free (it took almost 2 hours to go to every city or town I had access to). Ah well, the buffs from the candy were pretty interesting but that was about it, at least from what I've participated in so far.

With the new changes with pets and the talents, I am really liking how my pet and I are working out. I am really excited about reaching level 60 and getting my Exotic Pet talent! those 4 extra pts are going to go a long way in making my pets super killing machines (not that they already aren't)! Either way, I am happy with the changes that have been made so far and I am really excited about the new expansion now.

Happy Hunting,
Zuluki