At Last We Greet You, Karazhan...

Last night was so much fun that I was on for about 3 hours longer than I should have been.

Which then caused me to stumble into work MUCH too late. Lovely. Not good.

So here's what went down...

FIRST - I logged onto my rogue, got all the mats necessary - and made those wonderful Deathblow X11 Goggles that I wanted, then quested and farmed more mats getting my mining up to 367, and TRYING to get to 62 so I could "Show my pride" and actually WEAR the goggles. (Thanks for the comic reminder from an anonymous commenter - Scout Report is fun!)

Then my guildies logged on, and we have been planning on finally finishing up the now not totally required Kara attunement. We were expecting to take one or two of our members through Old Hillsbrad to get ready for Black Morass. We invited a 66 Ret Pally in the guild to come along to fill our group. Good that she came too, because there were some good blue upgrades for her!

Final setup was 70 Feral Druid tank, 70 Subtle Rogue, 70 Holy Pally, 70 BM Hunter and 66 Ret Pally. Durnholde is easy now. My guildmates do an amazing job as well... although we definitely need a bit more experience getting it perfect... I have to charge down mobs going after our hunter at times because we aren't focusing on the target I'm mainly tanking (Multiple mob pulls).

"Hey lets get Black Morass out of the way too!" I say

"I don't think we can handle it... Especially not with my heals" says our better-than-he-thinks-he-is healer. (He's awesome)

"Well let's go anyway!"

CHARGE!!! 18 waves later... Ba-da-bing that was EASY - but you know what? Probably the most fun I have ever had in an instance! I think we will continue getting others through the Kara Key process just because getting through the dungeons and BM is a great learning experience. And its FUN.

We only had one death on Temporus the 2nd boss - But that was only because the Hunter was a bit trigger happy and got a bunch of aggro before I'd even engaged him! The jerk didn't even drop the Hourglass of the Unraveller for us Other than that Chrono Lord Deja and the final boss Aeonus were pushovers.

My tactic on all the rifts and bosses was to position myself between the boss and Medivh, and when a new mob spawned and headed off towards Medivh (Stubborn bums have to be physically hit to stop them from bee-lining to Medivh - so no easy Ferocious Roars or Faerie Fires :( ) I would target and swipe him or lacerate just as he got close to where the Rift-boss was. That was usually good enough to keep them on me. Swipe was especially effective in getting the attention of those little whelps that spawn in 3s. Other than that we had our hunter and rogue picking up the runaways as well as burning down the Rift-bosses to close the rifts. We did a really good job.

It was also nice to laugh at the naysayers who said we couldn't do it!

After turning in the CoT quests I am almost Revered with KoT (hit honored on the way through), so I picked up the Heroic CoT key and the pattern for Drums of Panic. I have a feeling these will be fun in AV, AND even better it allowed me to finally cap my LW! 375 yay!

So of course we had to go into Kara to see what's up in there. Even just the front area is a lot cooler than many other instances - there's just a... Aura to the place that the developers really put some thought into this one. We died a couple times - but I turned in the first quest from the outside (and died) and now I have to find some diary.

Awesome night.
- Cool goggles for my rogue (and Tigersoul is jealous)
- Maxed Leatherworking
- Karazhan Master Key obtained for 4 of my guild officers so we can now organize runs
- Began discussing changes to guild structure to allow for some very laid-back Kara runs.

We'll see how it all works out.

Engineering Is Fun and Expensive

I finally made a marathon push leveling Engineering on Katryona up to 350 so I could make my first epics, the awesome DPS machines that are the Deathblow X11 Goggles - even more exciting is that when I get to 70, I can upgrade them to the even MORE Awesomer Quad Deathblow X44 Goggles!! (provided I can find the Schematic!)

Then I looked at the mats required...
Heavy Knothide Leather (6) - Skinning on my main - this is no problem.
Khorium Power Core - 3 Khorium Bars and 1 Primal Fire - I haven't even SEEN Khorium yet. AH maybe?
Hardened Adamantite Tube (2) - I need 6 Hardened Adamantite Bars - so 60 Adamantite Bars. Yikes.
Felsteel Stabilizer (4) - 8 Felsteel Bars (16 Eternium Bars & 24 Fel Iron Bars to make the Felsteel Bars) I can farm these, but it'll take a long time I think.
Primal Nether - No problem - Tigersoul has a couple of these.
Living Ruby (2) - At 50g a pop... these will be fun.

IF I were to buy all of these, the total cost would be about 500g according to my Server's current economy. Yikes! And since I powered my Engineering from 335 to 350 by making the ridiculously cheap White Smoke Flares, I didn't have to farm a lot ores... so I have a ways to go to max my Mining. And I can't even get Khorium until I'm maxed. Eternium will probably actually be the hardest mat for me to find.

These goggles rock. So I might just steal money from Tigersoul and get them made. Woohoo!

So to outline my "Marathon" from 330 to 350 (so not quite a marathon since I only went up 20 points, instead of 26.2) I made the following items:
Adamantite Grenade - 330 - 335
White Smoke Flare - 335 - 350

WOW pretty tough huh? Nice way to quickly level through those levels. Those flares can be kind of fun too. I would love to surround the flag with a bunch of those in a WSG match...

In the middle of this leveling Outland crashed on Dragonmaw and Lag spiked to 2800 in Stormwind. I wondered why I had only made 3 Fel Iron Bolts instead of the 10 I should have... Finally I was able to get to 350.

Hopefully tonight I will get those Deathblow goggles made!!

If you want to powerlevel your engineering from 1 - 375, Tentonhammer has a good guide. It's still an expensive undertaking. I have not followed this guide too much, because I've been having fun leveling as I go! Happy crafting!

Alts with Professions are Too Much Fun

I love my main. Tigersoul, however, is in a bit of a rut. The only Honor purchases I might want make are the Vindicator's Band of Triumph, the Veteran's Band of Triumph (not too bad to have them both, although there are certainly better rings) and the Vindicator's Pendant of Triumph (although really I'm still holding out for Haramad's Bargain). Total Honor requirement for the 3 of them? 41,900 Honor. I currently have just over 3,000 because of my Tiger-funk. They also require 20 AV marks for the rings and 10 EOTS marks for the neck, but I've got those covered. (100 AV and 14 EOTS)

Tigersoul basically is to the point where the only real advancement he'll get is in Arenas and Heroics, and like I've mentioned before - I'm not a huge fan of PUG-anything. I did tank for a friend through the easy Steamvaults run to the 2nd key frag, so I WAS able to get one step closer to attunement. That place is quite confusing if you've never been there and are taking the back way - I could see anything through all the plants and was QUITE confused! All that's left for Kara attunement is Arcatraz, Old Hillsbrad and BM yay!

I need to get my guild to start running regular instances for a while. I think some of our almost 70s would appreciate our help.

In the meantime - I've been leveling my Rogue Katryona (28 now) and my Priest Silverthorne (32) but more importantly or rather more FUN... their professions! Katryona is a Miner/Engineer, and Silverthorne is a Tailor/Enchanter. My problem... They are both basically at 225 in their respective crafts... and they can't advance to the next level (up to 300) until they are 35. D'oh! I need to get them leveled! As a side note on rogues and druids... IF I were to advocate giving cat-form more rogue-like abilities - VANISH would be my number one request. Somebody was saying Pick Locks (?!?!?!) but uhmm..... that'd be a talented kitty I must say. Vanish I could live with. I LOVE it!

About Engineering...
I like goggles and bombs.
For a decent guide from 1-375 if you are powerlevelling Engineering - TenTonHammer has a great guide. However I will have you know that Katryona isn't following that guide because she is having WAY too much fun using her Advanced Target Dummies and wearing pretty much useless Fire Goggles because they look cool... along with all the other fun bombs and toys that come with Engineering.

Finally, I can't seem to get WoWArmory to work for me lately. That also means Warcrafter won't sync my data NOW (I'm a bit obsessive) which makes me sad. I DID get to the Armory earlier today, and I noticed something funny. In the bottom left where it says "Last updated" it said "Last Updated: January 16, 1970" Wow! That's a LONG time since it was updated!! I have a screenshot at work - and I WILL post it to prove it.