With two weeks until Mechagon (the dungeon) opens and we're allowed to face down Mechagon (the boss), I have plenty of time to explore Mechagon (the island). Seriously, they could've put some effort in naming things. It's like smurf village up in this place.
My GOD, the difference in tone between the Nazjatar and here are night and day. For general "feel", the zone is very much like an extension of Stormsong Valley, with rolling green hills and the occasional scrapyard thrown in for flavor. The island itself is littered with densely packed heavy hitting robotic monstrosities, which provide the primary resource you need: "scrap parts". That's right, this island is all about the tinkering… tinkering and FISHING!
The tinkering aspects come in a few flavors:
- there are landscape "projects" that require completion. You feed them resources like spare parts and charged power cells (you can find depleted ones and there's a time gating mechanism that lets you charge one every now and then for scrap) just like wood and steel for the Warfront buildings. Once done, you get access to nifty things like flamethrowers and jump packs.
- There's a robot that assembles things once you've collected the blueprints and parts. All in all, there's several dozen things you can make including "The Mechanocat Laser Pointer", which yields a paintable cat mount (apparently you can spray paint it one of eight colors)
- Statless rings and trinkets can be acquired and customized using a socket system. The "gems" in this case are "punchcards", obtainable by reputation, boss drops, or from the mythic dungeon opening Soon™.
Fishing is generally its own reward, but I was delighted to catch new rares as part of a fishing achievement in various pools and sections of the coastline. There's also a questline that ends with you fishing up a 3-man boss fight. Collecting all the fish will be a thing for me to do over the weekend when I have more time, just like hunting down rare spawns. As it was, I spent less than 2 hours getting to and screwing around in Mechagon, which was more than enough time to do everything that was currently available I could find and explore the island fully.
Afterwards it was time to hit Fishland. The short version is "I did most of the dailies and all the WQ, which got my fishboi to level 3 and unlocked the next part of the campaign and then did all of that." I think my next step is either rep-gated or I have to do more of the War Campaign proper. The only thing of real note is that they managed to make a daily worse than Beachhead. "Jumping Jellies"…it's a "jumping puzzle" using an engine that wasn't designed with jumping puzzles in mind. In this case, you leap onto floating jellyfish which bounce you high into the air and you have to Tokyo drift yourself onto a slightly higher jelly a number of times before you can reach an octopus named "Tickles" floating in a magic bubble well above the area. This. is. hell. If you fail to stick the landing, you fall into an area swarming with naga, because OF COURSE YOU DO. All in all, it took somewhere around a couple dozen tries to get it and I will seriously reconsider it when it comes up next in my daily rotation.
For all my efforts, I'm now "friendly" with both the friendly mechagnomes ("The Rustbolt Resistance") and fishbois ("some unspellable name with too many vowels").
Thursday, June 27, 2019
Wednesday, June 26, 2019
Behold! Atlant--Nazjatar!
Spent my somewhat limited playtime on the new island of Nazjatar, a formerly sunken land raised from the depths by Queen NagaMcFace, Azsuna Matata using the Tidestone. Wait a minute.
The tidestone-- one of the "Pillars of the Creation" we used in Legion to seal away fel crap in the Tomb of Sargeras. One of the things holding something at bay, that MAGNI BRONZEBEARD said we couldn't use to help heal Azeroth because it was too important to move. Fortunately, this is explained in a cutscene with Fishface entrusting it to an underling with a dismissive "I trust you not to leave it unguarded like they did." WHARGRRBL. It's like they hired David Benioff and D. B. Weiss of Game of Thrones notoriety to "plot something". UGH.
Crappy writing aside, how's the actual content?
I'm enjoying it-- while hundreds of people poured past me to start the intro quests, I fished up some new beauties (Viper fish and mauve stingers) and was pleasantly surprised to see my fishing increase to 151. A quick search showed all professions increased to a new max rank of 175! Enchanting is going to be painful as all get out, as it usually is, but that's for another day. After a few minutes, I cheerfully trotted along behind the herd and sniped may way into 8.2 proper. Here's the highlights of the new patch and zone:
- After a short questline that takes you to Silithus and Deathwing's former mancave, you get a slot for your necklace, with more slots as you level it up to 70. It's arranged so almost everyone will start off with a "major" slot (requires necklace level 35) and 2 minors as you go. The things you slot in them are general or role-specific MacGuffins you get from doing your favorite activity, be it PvP, Questing, Raids, Grinding Rep, etc. A little something for everybody.
- New currency called "manapearls" that can be used to buy some rep gear, but mostly used to upgrade a new type of armor that starts at i385. As you spend pearls, it increases in ilevel. The first upgrade takes it to i400 and subsequent upgrades are 5 ilievel increments.
- Once a day you pick one of three fishman bodyguards to accompany you while you adventure in the zone. As you complete WQs and dailies with them, they level up, eventually unlocking new abilities. This is a slow grind, as after several WQs and all the dailies I could find, I only got my fishboi to level 2.
- There's a nifty "trading game" that played with some murlocs that have infested your base-- you might enjoy this one. Basically, there's the main murloc who sells one random thing a day (for me yesterday's was a necklace that broke apart into 3 manapearls), but to buy it, you need a bunch of things sold by three other murlocs. Those things require trading other things sold by a different murloc, etc. For example, 120 vegetables bought for 1 gold each may trade for 20 murloc socks, which in turn trade for 5 "ghost lunches", which is part of what you need to buy the necklace. From peeking around, eventually you will get a cape that, when worn, reveals rarer items the murloc will sell, including a mount.
- Aside from the usual WQs and dailies, there's at least one event where Naga Elites will spawn across the map requiring a mass push to kill before "they gain power"
The zone itself has a few flight points, but is utter hell to navigate. The geography is tight, winding, multilevel (not quite Guild Wars 2 bad, but surprisingly complex for WoW) and densely populated with mobs that hit like a truck (think the early days of Tol Barad). It'll be better once flight is unlocked, but for now… I'm getting my mileage out of Greater Invisibility, that's for sure.
Flight requires:
- Pathfinder Part 1 (CHECK!)
- Fully exploring the zone (CHECK!)
- Fully exploring Mechagon (TO DO)
- Getting Revered with both of the new factions (oh, god)
The last bit is going to be several weeks, I think. You start off as Neutral with the fishbois and after yesterday's exploits, I am still solidly in Neutral territory.
I ran out of time to check out Mechagon, but I did finish the starter quest chain which is a neat little bit that happens in a junkyard. At this point, I just need to gather a team of gnomes and start the expedition!
The tidestone-- one of the "Pillars of the Creation" we used in Legion to seal away fel crap in the Tomb of Sargeras. One of the things holding something at bay, that MAGNI BRONZEBEARD said we couldn't use to help heal Azeroth because it was too important to move. Fortunately, this is explained in a cutscene with Fishface entrusting it to an underling with a dismissive "I trust you not to leave it unguarded like they did." WHARGRRBL. It's like they hired David Benioff and D. B. Weiss of Game of Thrones notoriety to "plot something". UGH.
Crappy writing aside, how's the actual content?
I'm enjoying it-- while hundreds of people poured past me to start the intro quests, I fished up some new beauties (Viper fish and mauve stingers) and was pleasantly surprised to see my fishing increase to 151. A quick search showed all professions increased to a new max rank of 175! Enchanting is going to be painful as all get out, as it usually is, but that's for another day. After a few minutes, I cheerfully trotted along behind the herd and sniped may way into 8.2 proper. Here's the highlights of the new patch and zone:
- After a short questline that takes you to Silithus and Deathwing's former mancave, you get a slot for your necklace, with more slots as you level it up to 70. It's arranged so almost everyone will start off with a "major" slot (requires necklace level 35) and 2 minors as you go. The things you slot in them are general or role-specific MacGuffins you get from doing your favorite activity, be it PvP, Questing, Raids, Grinding Rep, etc. A little something for everybody.
- New currency called "manapearls" that can be used to buy some rep gear, but mostly used to upgrade a new type of armor that starts at i385. As you spend pearls, it increases in ilevel. The first upgrade takes it to i400 and subsequent upgrades are 5 ilievel increments.
- Once a day you pick one of three fishman bodyguards to accompany you while you adventure in the zone. As you complete WQs and dailies with them, they level up, eventually unlocking new abilities. This is a slow grind, as after several WQs and all the dailies I could find, I only got my fishboi to level 2.
- There's a nifty "trading game" that played with some murlocs that have infested your base-- you might enjoy this one. Basically, there's the main murloc who sells one random thing a day (for me yesterday's was a necklace that broke apart into 3 manapearls), but to buy it, you need a bunch of things sold by three other murlocs. Those things require trading other things sold by a different murloc, etc. For example, 120 vegetables bought for 1 gold each may trade for 20 murloc socks, which in turn trade for 5 "ghost lunches", which is part of what you need to buy the necklace. From peeking around, eventually you will get a cape that, when worn, reveals rarer items the murloc will sell, including a mount.
- Aside from the usual WQs and dailies, there's at least one event where Naga Elites will spawn across the map requiring a mass push to kill before "they gain power"
The zone itself has a few flight points, but is utter hell to navigate. The geography is tight, winding, multilevel (not quite Guild Wars 2 bad, but surprisingly complex for WoW) and densely populated with mobs that hit like a truck (think the early days of Tol Barad). It'll be better once flight is unlocked, but for now… I'm getting my mileage out of Greater Invisibility, that's for sure.
Flight requires:
- Pathfinder Part 1 (CHECK!)
- Fully exploring the zone (CHECK!)
- Fully exploring Mechagon (TO DO)
- Getting Revered with both of the new factions (oh, god)
The last bit is going to be several weeks, I think. You start off as Neutral with the fishbois and after yesterday's exploits, I am still solidly in Neutral territory.
I ran out of time to check out Mechagon, but I did finish the starter quest chain which is a neat little bit that happens in a junkyard. At this point, I just need to gather a team of gnomes and start the expedition!
Tuesday, June 25, 2019
I've Been Waiting a Long Time for This
With 8.2 dropping by this evening, I'm tickled to note I made most of my goals by my own artificial deadline, notably finishing up the Horde War Campaign and all that razzamatazz. Although Strev didn't quite make it to a level 50 Heart of Azeroth, I'm content with 48.5. I even took the time to do some miscellaneous things… like knocking out ALL of the Midsummer Festival bonfires from WotLK to present. Funny thing-- for over a decade my playtime and midsummer simply didn't overlap. So, by hitting all of the fires all of the expansions past Burning Crusades had to offer, I racked up over 500 event currency and finished another 100 points of achievements. Now…what to do with the "fire bucks" ("blazing blossoms?"-- hell if I know)? There's a number of toys that range from 300-500 each and like 3 pets for 350 each. I imagine I was supposed to do this every year, since the fun bucks disappear at the end of the event and like hell I'm juggling torches for 2 weeks.
Turns out all of the pets can be traded on the AH and sell for 10-20k each. This means that I can let some other enterprising person farm the pets for me and I can just buy them with cash later. So, I spent 500 on a book of matches instead. WORTH IT! After a brief "Playing with Matches" progress indicator, you set yourself on fire and run around out of control in horror for 10 seconds or so arms in the air leaving a blazing trail as you go. Absolutely hilarious. It's a 30 minute cooldown, which is good, otherwise I'd be using this constantly. In retrospect, I could insanely run Anyth, Anythe, Onsunshine, and the rest of the Alt Brigade around for the rest of the toys and pets, but that's a serious pain in the butt and I have a feeling 8.2 will be the focus of my efforts for the next couple of weeks.
Keeping up the "things on fire" theme, I finished up Avengers of Hyjal reputation by defeating Ragnaros for the somethingth time. The 25-man mythic takes less than a half hour to run through just futzing around and yields about 2k worth of gold and prizes, so it's been a "when I happen to remember it" thing. It was the last rep I needed for the expansion that launched in 2010 (and I still hate it for ruining hundreds of classic quests).
As I mentioned, historically WoW and I never play in the summer… which has kept me from the Zookeeper achievement since Pandalanda launched in September 2012. The maligned "Pokémon rip-off" that came with Mists of Pandaria came with scads of achievements, not the least of which is a meta achievement for collecting EVERY SINGLE PET in Eastern Kingdoms and Kalimdor. The funny thing is they made it so some pets are stupidly rare for example, there's the "arctic fox kit" that only spawns in one zone when there's a random active weather event (blizzard), but more annoyingly one pet that only spawns in Winter and one that only spawns in Summer. As in…the actual real world calendar. Since I restarted last fall, I've been waiting for the first day of summer so I can get that damn Qiraji Guardling in Silithus. So the first thing I did when I logged on 6/21 was go Guardling hunting.
This proved slightly more annoying than I thought it would be. Time travelling back to "the time before a giant sword rent the world asunder", I came across the buggers. Unfortunately, my pets were too strong. After the second "whoopsies!", I toned it down to some random midrange pets and tried again. My quarry was of poor quality, but my heart sang jubilant notes as the trap closed. But…where was the fanfare? The achievement? The Zookeeper title? In confusion, I pulled up the achievement to see why it didn't give me credit.
Turns out I was missing a second "one last" creature. One I had completely forgotten about since it had been many years since I actually looked at the full list and had focused only on "the summer pet". "Silithid Hatchling" Ok. Spawns in Silithis-- Yay! I scoured the map. No bugs. Read more. "Only spawns during sandstorms." MOTHER F#$%! The forums told of people who camped for days waiting for a sandstorm. Looks like it's now my turn.
Strev has other things to do. For now, Onsunshine keeps a silent watch from a withered vine overlooking the Noxious Lair in a corner of Silithis. She reports in occasionally, but it's been nothing but clear skies for days.
Turns out all of the pets can be traded on the AH and sell for 10-20k each. This means that I can let some other enterprising person farm the pets for me and I can just buy them with cash later. So, I spent 500 on a book of matches instead. WORTH IT! After a brief "Playing with Matches" progress indicator, you set yourself on fire and run around out of control in horror for 10 seconds or so arms in the air leaving a blazing trail as you go. Absolutely hilarious. It's a 30 minute cooldown, which is good, otherwise I'd be using this constantly. In retrospect, I could insanely run Anyth, Anythe, Onsunshine, and the rest of the Alt Brigade around for the rest of the toys and pets, but that's a serious pain in the butt and I have a feeling 8.2 will be the focus of my efforts for the next couple of weeks.
Keeping up the "things on fire" theme, I finished up Avengers of Hyjal reputation by defeating Ragnaros for the somethingth time. The 25-man mythic takes less than a half hour to run through just futzing around and yields about 2k worth of gold and prizes, so it's been a "when I happen to remember it" thing. It was the last rep I needed for the expansion that launched in 2010 (and I still hate it for ruining hundreds of classic quests).
As I mentioned, historically WoW and I never play in the summer… which has kept me from the Zookeeper achievement since Pandalanda launched in September 2012. The maligned "Pokémon rip-off" that came with Mists of Pandaria came with scads of achievements, not the least of which is a meta achievement for collecting EVERY SINGLE PET in Eastern Kingdoms and Kalimdor. The funny thing is they made it so some pets are stupidly rare for example, there's the "arctic fox kit" that only spawns in one zone when there's a random active weather event (blizzard), but more annoyingly one pet that only spawns in Winter and one that only spawns in Summer. As in…the actual real world calendar. Since I restarted last fall, I've been waiting for the first day of summer so I can get that damn Qiraji Guardling in Silithus. So the first thing I did when I logged on 6/21 was go Guardling hunting.
This proved slightly more annoying than I thought it would be. Time travelling back to "the time before a giant sword rent the world asunder", I came across the buggers. Unfortunately, my pets were too strong. After the second "whoopsies!", I toned it down to some random midrange pets and tried again. My quarry was of poor quality, but my heart sang jubilant notes as the trap closed. But…where was the fanfare? The achievement? The Zookeeper title? In confusion, I pulled up the achievement to see why it didn't give me credit.
Turns out I was missing a second "one last" creature. One I had completely forgotten about since it had been many years since I actually looked at the full list and had focused only on "the summer pet". "Silithid Hatchling" Ok. Spawns in Silithis-- Yay! I scoured the map. No bugs. Read more. "Only spawns during sandstorms." MOTHER F#$%! The forums told of people who camped for days waiting for a sandstorm. Looks like it's now my turn.
Strev has other things to do. For now, Onsunshine keeps a silent watch from a withered vine overlooking the Noxious Lair in a corner of Silithis. She reports in occasionally, but it's been nothing but clear skies for days.
Thursday, June 20, 2019
A Last Minute Flurry of Inactivity
With 8.2 just around the bend, this will mark the first time I've played an entire WoW expansion cycle. Usually I drop out before or just after the first major content patch due to the huge dry spells. So this week has been all about the "oh, god, oh, god-- what do I still need to do?" bits until I remembered that it really doesn't matter.
Strev is close to level 48 on the necklace and would be at the 50-level max if I had not been quarter-assing it for a few months. There's supposed to be a new advancement mechanic for the stupid necklace so it works more like a Legion artifact, where you collect "essences" and unlock what amount to talents for your class, so worst case I should be able to get the last bit without stressing over it.
Anythe (Horde) is sitting around 10k rep shy of Exalted for Honorbound, so I wasn't able to finish the "other side's" 8.1 War Campaign in time, but that's ok. It isn't going anywhere and I'll just finish it up at my leisure once I get to the point of getting tired of whatever the new daily grind will be on Strev.
Acannasta (Void Elf victim of random name-generation) is sitting pretty at around level 43. Last night for funsies I ran her through Westfall and started in on Lakeshire between dungeon runs. Without a doubt she's the most fun I'm having right now. Since her progress is irrelevant in the long run, she will get mothballed when 8.2 drops, so I'm enjoying the ride for now. On a typical run "Canna" is usually second or third on the DPS charts, behind the tank and maybe a DPS. (Tanks at this level have ridiculous AoE and since they try to pull the world usually, they stay in the #1 spot. I'm ok with this.) I took the level 30 talent that give my PW: Shield's target a 3 second speed boost, so I'm usually running "support". In between fights, I'll boost the tank along to make the run go that much faster, off-heal when the "real healer" needs it, drop a shield just before the tank engages, levitate when the dungeon calls for it (Screw you, Gnomeregan). Then there was Scarlet Halls.
I've commented before that run at this level are generally smooth. Operative word: generally. Every now and then, you'll get a new tank who pulls things one at a time (longest Wailing Caverns run since Vanilla there) and the DPS decides to start "helping", then it just gets hilarious, but this… I can only guess it was a new healer without anything on their tray. At first I thought the shaman healer was afk, but they were tagging along, not contributing to DPS… and not seeming to heal either. DPS was never healed and every now and then I'd see a tiny sliver on the health bar indicate something was healing the tank, but by the second Near Death Experience for the tank, I started full-bore healing. As shadow. Kill me. Twice the tank died due to me being silenced or stunned, and I took a death myself and I have no idea if the tank ever knew I was the only reason he wasn't tasting floor much more often. The shaman never said a word-- we just continued like that for another 9 minutes and cleared the place.
Shame on me for replacing Recount with a snazzier DPS meter. I haven't bothered to learn how the thing works yet, so I didn't try to figure out what the shaman was or was not doing. Still we were all new or tried to play hopped up on Ambien once. Hopefully, they'll get the hang of it.
Strev is close to level 48 on the necklace and would be at the 50-level max if I had not been quarter-assing it for a few months. There's supposed to be a new advancement mechanic for the stupid necklace so it works more like a Legion artifact, where you collect "essences" and unlock what amount to talents for your class, so worst case I should be able to get the last bit without stressing over it.
Anythe (Horde) is sitting around 10k rep shy of Exalted for Honorbound, so I wasn't able to finish the "other side's" 8.1 War Campaign in time, but that's ok. It isn't going anywhere and I'll just finish it up at my leisure once I get to the point of getting tired of whatever the new daily grind will be on Strev.
Acannasta (Void Elf victim of random name-generation) is sitting pretty at around level 43. Last night for funsies I ran her through Westfall and started in on Lakeshire between dungeon runs. Without a doubt she's the most fun I'm having right now. Since her progress is irrelevant in the long run, she will get mothballed when 8.2 drops, so I'm enjoying the ride for now. On a typical run "Canna" is usually second or third on the DPS charts, behind the tank and maybe a DPS. (Tanks at this level have ridiculous AoE and since they try to pull the world usually, they stay in the #1 spot. I'm ok with this.) I took the level 30 talent that give my PW: Shield's target a 3 second speed boost, so I'm usually running "support". In between fights, I'll boost the tank along to make the run go that much faster, off-heal when the "real healer" needs it, drop a shield just before the tank engages, levitate when the dungeon calls for it (Screw you, Gnomeregan). Then there was Scarlet Halls.
I've commented before that run at this level are generally smooth. Operative word: generally. Every now and then, you'll get a new tank who pulls things one at a time (longest Wailing Caverns run since Vanilla there) and the DPS decides to start "helping", then it just gets hilarious, but this… I can only guess it was a new healer without anything on their tray. At first I thought the shaman healer was afk, but they were tagging along, not contributing to DPS… and not seeming to heal either. DPS was never healed and every now and then I'd see a tiny sliver on the health bar indicate something was healing the tank, but by the second Near Death Experience for the tank, I started full-bore healing. As shadow. Kill me. Twice the tank died due to me being silenced or stunned, and I took a death myself and I have no idea if the tank ever knew I was the only reason he wasn't tasting floor much more often. The shaman never said a word-- we just continued like that for another 9 minutes and cleared the place.
Shame on me for replacing Recount with a snazzier DPS meter. I haven't bothered to learn how the thing works yet, so I didn't try to figure out what the shaman was or was not doing. Still we were all new or tried to play hopped up on Ambien once. Hopefully, they'll get the hang of it.
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