I am not a spam bot, I'm a diplomat!

So as I was doing up the quest info for Stratholme I discovered that I've been flagged as being a spammer, not a real person. They made me fill out a box with squiggly letters to slow down my bottingness. Apparently a lot of links to one site sets off a red flag. Well, I'm not a bot, so here's a real post with NO links at all.

Ok, I lied. One link, but it's not to a World of Warcraft strategy site at all. DipBounced Diplomacy site is a fully self-contained site that 'judges' Diplomacy moves automatically. You sign up for games anonymously and can send messages to the other powers through the site itself. It generates maps of the game automatically as well. In short, it's great!

Quest Chains for Stratholme

I am bitter, both Allakhazam and Thottbot were missing quests easily picked up in EPL, so I'm wondering if more obscure quests were missed too.

Any Side?
The Flesh Does Not Lie
Houses of the Holy
The Great Fras Siabi
The Restless Souls

Live Side
(Chains from Fordring in EPL) Of Love and Family
The Archivist

Dead Side
(Live Side) Aurius' Reckoning
(Chains for Ras Frostwhisper quest) Menethil's Gift
(Chains from Nanthanos in EPL) Ramstein

Quest Chains for Scholomance

(Tirisfal Glades) Barov Family Fortune
(WPL) Doctor Theolen Krastinov, the Butcher
(EPL) Plagued Hatchlings
(Tirisfal Glades) Scholomance (Makes the key?)

Quest Chains for Black Rock Spire

Lower
(Burning Steppes) En-Ay-Es-Tee-Why
(Burning Steppes) Kibler's Exotic Pets
(Burning Steppes) Mother's Milk
(Badlands) Operative Bijou
(Burning Steppes) Put Her Down
(Chain from ZF, Tanaris) The Final Tablets
(Badlands) Warlord's Command (Onyxia key start)

Upper
(Burning Steppes) Broodling Essence --> Egg Freezing
(Winterspring) The Demon Forge

Quest Chains for Dire Maul

East
Lethtendris's Web
Pusillin and the Elder Azj'Tordin
(Moonglade, level 56) A Reliquary of Purity -> Shards of the Felvine

North
Elven Legends

West
The Madness Within

Tier 0 drop locations

For quickish reference, here are the names of the bosses that drop the tier-0 set pieces we need.

Tier 0 drops

	Druid	Priest	Rogue	Shaman	Warrior
Head	Darkmaster Gandling	Darkmaster Gandling	Darkmaster Gandling	Darkmaster Gandling	Darkmaster Gandling
Shoulder	Gizrul the Slavener	Solakar Flamewreath	Cannon Master Willey	Gyth	Warchief Rend Blackhand
Chest	General Drakkisath	General Drakkisath	General Drakkisath	General Drakkisath	General Drakkisath
Wrist	BoE from Strat/Scholo?	BoE from Strat	BoE from Scholo/Strat?	BoE from Strat/Scholo?	BoE from BRS
Hands	BoE from BRS	Archivist Galford	Shadow Hunter Vosh'gajin	Pyroguard Emberseer	Ramstein the Gorger
Waist	BoE from Scholo/BRS?	BoE from BRS	BoE from BRS	BoE from LBRS	BoE from Strat/LBRS
Legs	Baron Rivendare	Baron Rivendare	Baron Rivendare	Baron Rivendare	Baron Rivendare
Feet	Mother Smolderweb	Maleki the Pallid	Rattlegore	Highlord Omokk	Kirtonos the Herald

Wrist, gloves, and waist are all BoE, and mostly drop from random trash in some zones.

Quest Chains for Black Rock Depths

(Dead in BRM) Dark Iron Legacy
The Love Potion
(Kargath) Lost Thunderbrew Recipe
(Searing Gorge) Divine Retribution ->>>>>>>>>>> A Taste of Flame
(Kargath) Commander Gor'shak
(Kargath) Disharmony of Fire
(Kargath) KILL ON SIGHT: Dark Iron Dwarves
(Burning Steppes) Ribbly Screwspigot
(Kargath) The Rise of the Machines

Mail with +damage

Head : Carrion Scorpid Helm +26dam/heal, king in DM North
Head : Coif of The Five Thunders +14dam/heal, 1%crit, 0.5 set
Neck : Orb of the Darkmoon +22dam/heal, faire
Shoulder : Denwatcher's Shoulders +18dam/heal, guards in DM North
Chest : Vest of The Five Thunders +14dam/heal. 1%crit, 0.5 set
Belt : Barrage Girdle +23dam/heal, cannon master in live strat
Legs : Silvermoon Leggings +18dam/heal, prince in DM west
Feet : Greaves of Withering Despair +11dam/heal, 1%hit, interrogator in BRD
Wrist : Modest Armguards +12dam/heal, guards in DM north
Hands : Dracorian Gauntlets +16dam/heal, baron in strat
Ring : Don Mauricio's Band of Domination +11dam/heal, 1%crit, gandling in scholo
Ring : Maiden's Circle +18dam/heal, BoE world blue
Trinket : Briarwood Reed +29dam/heal, Jed (rare) in UBRS
Trinket : Royal Seal of Eldre'Thalas +23dam/heal, DM
Back : Crystalline Threaded Cape +20dam/heal, BoE blue from elemental summoning in Silithus
Shield : Draconian Aegis of the Legion +20dam/heal, 0.5 quest spawn in UBRS

Quest Chains for Sunken Temple

(Feralas) The Sunken Temple ->> Into the Depths
(Get the egg chained from ZF) The God Hakkar
Pool of Tears ->>> The Temple of Atal'Hakkar
(Un'goro Crater) Larion and Muigin ->> Zapper Fuel

ALSO

Most if not all classes have a level 50 minimum quest that ends in Sunken Temple. Make sure you do the prereqs for it. (Your class trainer should point you towards them.)

Corruption of Earth and Seed
Legends of Maraudon
(Orgrimmar) Shadowshard Fragments
The Pariah's Instructions
Twisted Evils
Vyletongue Corruption

Quest Chains for Zul'Farrak

• (Gadgetzan) Divino-matic Rod
• (Thousand Needles) Gahz'Rilla
• (Gadgetzan) Scarab Shells
• (Steemwheedle Port) Screecher Spirits -> The Prophecy of Mosh'aru
• (Hinterlands) Venom Bottles ->>> The Spider God
• (Dustwallow Marsh) Tabetha's Task -> Tiara of the Deep
• (Gadgetzan) Troll Temper

Star Wars : Empire At War

I like real-time strategy games, I like empire building games, and I like Star Wars, so it seemed worthwhile to pick up a copy of this game. I haven't had much time to play it yet, but the very first mission for the Empire features Darth Vader as one of your units. Picture a Jim Raynor from Starcraft except make him completely and utterly invincible and allow him to one shot most things, and that's Vader.

Not too surprising, you know, considering he's DARTH VADER, but it kinda takes a bit of the challenge away. Of course, it is the first mission so the challenge is really "Can you click on your units, move them in the general vicinity of the enemies, and maybe click attack?"

The downside is I haven't lost Vader yet, and he's still as dominating now. Not exactly invincible but he's easy enough to heal.

Quest Chains for Uldaman

• (In Uldaman) The Platinum Discs
• (In Uldaman or maybe Orgrimmar?) Necklace Recovery
• (Badlands) Power Stones
• (Undercity) Reclaimed Treasures
• (Badlands (alchemist only maybe?)) Badlands Reagent Run

Quest Chains for Razorfen Downs

• (Inside RFD) Scourge of the Downs
• (Undercity) Bring the End

Quest Chains for Scarlet Monastery

• (in SM graveyard) Vorrel's Revenge
• (Thunderbluff (not for undead?)) Compendium of the Fallen
• (Undercity) Into The Scarlet Monastery
• (Thousand Needles) Test of Faith --------> (Undercity) Test of Lore

What a lady... What a night!

Sunday night I finally got my chance to tank Onyxia. We wiped once while I re-learned a painful lesson about how hard it is to get aggro on a taunt-immune mob when you have no rage. With that information in hand we went back in for a second try which went much smoother. Of course, none of this would have been possible without all my amazing guildies in Incarnation who kept me healed and fear warded and who, you know, actually killed the evil lady.

Once it was clear we were going to win (around 5% or so) I threw down my Unfired Ancient Blade and it took care of itself. A quick jaunt into the Dire Maul library and I finally had my twinky sword.

Above is a picture of my sword, axe, and amazing hair do. Also, a picture me and the Quel'Serrar in the rest of my normal tanking gear. It is the sweetest looking weapon around. Also, try not to step on my head when you walk by, you'll REALLY cut your foot.

Go Canada!

I've been spending a lot of time watching the Olympics lately, and just wanted to cheer on our athletes, especially the curlers and hockey players.

What's up with quest chains?

If I had any readers at all they might be wondering why I posted quest chains for low level horde instances. Well, I have started a troll shaman on the Balnazzar server. The goal is to run instances with people I know the whole way up, in this case 2 of my current roommates and 2 of my former roommates. The plan so far is to play every Thursday night, so we're not exactly leveling fast, but it's good fun.

Why only Thursday night? Well, I've recently joined a raiding guild on my main server, Zul'Jin. And I get to main tank a good chunk of the time! And we raid pretty much every night but Thursday. We've done Lucifron to Majordomo Exectus in one night. We've killed the first 3 bosses of AQ20. They'd killed Hakkar before I joined, but Zul'Gurub hasn't been a focus of raids since Ahn'Qiraj was released and Molten Core became farmable.

Thursday is also one of the few nights Pounder doesn't raid on Kilrogg. I'm pretty sure Tom raids every night with his guild on Zul'jin but that hasn't stopped him from playing his druid with us either.

Raiding is kinda like a full time job... But at least it's fun. And brings fat purple lootses with it.

Quest Chains for Razorfen Kraul

• (In RFK) Willix the Importer
• (Thunder Bluff) A Vengeful Fate
• (Ratchet) Blueleaf Tubers
• (Undercity) Going, Going, Guano!

Quest Chains for Gnomeregan

• (In Gnomeregan) A Fine Mess
• (Orgrimmar) Rig Wars

Quest Chains for Shadowfang Keep

• (Silverpine Forest) Arugal Must Die
• (Silverpine Forest) Deathstalkers in Shadowfang
• (Undercity) The Book of Ur

Quest Chains for Blackfathom Deeps

• (Inside BFD) Allegiance to the Old Gods -> Allegiance to the Old Gods
• (Stonetalon Mountains) Trouble in the Deeps {skippable?} -> (Ashenvale) The Essence of Aku'Mai -> Amongst the Ruins

Quest Chains for Wailing Caverns

• Raptor Horns -> Smart Drinks
• (Ratchet) Trouble at the Docks
• (Crossroads) Fungal Spores -> (Thunder Bluff) Apothecary Zamah -> Serpentbloom
• (Crossroads) The Forgotten Pools -> The Stagnant Oasis -> Altered Beings -> (Sepulcher) Mura Runetotem -> (Thunder Bluff) Hamuul Runetotem -> Nara Wildmane -> Leaders of the Fang
• (Above WC) Deviate Eradication
• (Above WC) Deviate Hides
• (In WC) The Glowing Shard -> In Nightmares
• (Darkmoon Faire) Your Fortune Awaits You

Limited duration buffs make me sad

At the start of disk 2 of FFIX there's a fight pitting Garnet, Steiner and Marcus against an insane black mage. Having recently acquired protect and shell and assuming (correctly) that a huge black mage might attack with spells I decided to shell up my team. It cannot be cast on more than one person at a time (presumably I will learn shell 2 or shellra eventually) so I started out by putting it on Steiner, then on Marcus. By the time I'd cast it on Garnet the one I had cast on Steiner had worn off. Worn off! I could not have my entire party shelled at the same time! (And this was only a 3 person group, not the full 4 that is possible.)

So, from that point on Garnet just beat down with her lacrosse stick and healed when needed. It's probably all she'll ever do. Something that really frustrates me is when game designers put spells or abilities in a game that you should not ever use. Why even bother giving me the spell if it only lasts 2 rounds of combat?

Another peeve is Scan, which has missed on every single monster on which I've cast it. At least I can foresee a use for that spell... If I ever have both Garnet and Quina in my party at the same time it will make eating things easier.


Also, I managed to buy Foror's Compendium of Dragon Slaying for 1350g yesterday. Now I just need to get into a top-end guild or bum my way into an Onyxia kill.

Party in San Juan!

One of the best parts (or at least the silliest parts) of the game Puerto Rico is the little space on your play mat marked 'San Juan'. When you have extra slaves with no fields or buildings to make them work they get to hang out in San Juan. It's a party!

A spin-off game named San Juan came out a while ago. It plays similar to Puerto Rico but with a lot more randomness, a lot less predicting opponent's moves, and a shorter play time. I played a few games with Mike before Games Day got kicked off yesterday and 3 more yesterday morning on BSW.

In one of the games yesterday my opponent managed to pull two different 6 cost buildings off of his gold mine. I hate the gold mine with a passion. Of all the randomness in the game, losing to lucky gold mines is the worst. As it turned out, however, I still won that game. And by a fair margin. Zumft Hall (Guild Hall for you non early or German BSWers) plus a whole lot of production buildings was just too much.

Which in and of itself is probably the second worst part of the game. Drawing an early Guild Hall and just holding on to it while you build any production buildings you draw just seems too strong.

But when games take like 15 minutes or so to play, I don't really mind so much that sometimes randomness is the deciding factor. Heck, I don't really play non-random games anyway, so I must like randomly winning games on some level. It's the randomly losing that isn't so nice. ;)


As an aside, I'm done disk 1 of FFIX. I still don't remember too much about what will come, but I am being reminded of how much I dislike or don't care for many of the characters. It's not like other games from the series... I mean, I wasn't a fan of Gau or Sabin or Strago... But when you have Locke, Celes, Setzer, Shadow, Edgar, Mog, and Terra (to name a few) it's a lot easier to ignore the ones you don't care for. So far in IX there isn't really a character that I want to latch onto. Quina is still funny, but is more annoying this time through for some reason. Steiner and Freya are both awful. Dagger and Zidane are rather shmeh. And while Vivi is amazing he just doesn't have the mana pool to be both fun to play and fun to have on screen.

Not from this game, but important to remind you nonetheless...

Kimahri wants EXPERIENCE!

Games Night in the Lounge

Last night was our first scheduled games night of the term. We played a 4 player game of Puerto Rico (I was 4th chair, got off to a good start but then misplayed my position in midgame, allowing the boats to end up indigo, tobacco, coffee with me holding 7 corn. I ended up last with 51 points.)

Then we played a 6 player game of Apples to Apples, which is a silly fun game. Not a good game. We had some laughs though, so it's all good. After a quick trip to the local all-day breakfast diner we returned to play a 6 player game of ZOMBIES!!! It's a fun concept but it takes too long, in no small part due to the vast number of cards designed solely to hinder the progress of other players. 4 people were running for the helipad leaving Byung and myself each trying to reach the 25 zombies goal. After several turns of being prevented from moving at all by other people's cards I got annoyed and tried to help Byung kill his zombies by using my destructive movement cards to move him where he wanted to go anyway. He ended up being killed by the 23rd zombie.

To pay back that deed he spawned 10 zombies in the streets around me, giving me an actual chance to get lucky and kill them all. (Note:Spawning 10 zombies around someone is almost always very destructive in this game. It tends to result in them getting killed by zombies.) But, a combination of 3 destructive cards meant I couldn't even ATTACK them for 3 full turns, which ended up being enough time for both Mike and Jeff to make it to the helipad for a joint victory. Also a fun game, not a great game.

I restarted playing Final Fantasy IX again, as I do not remember much about it from when I beat it shortly after its release. The graphics are distinctly underwhelming at this point in time though. Gameplay is still fun.

World of Warcraft is still taking up copious amounts of my time. I made plans with two of my roommates (Pounder and Andrew) and with Byung to make a group of 4 characters to play together in instances on a new server. It should be fun, especially since I get to be the shaman. Shaman being one of the classes I have not played with much at all.

Oops! is brought to you by erasers...

Don't make a mistake without one!

Guess I failed pretty miserably at staying on an update/day pace. On the plus side I am fully moved into my new place and plans have already started for setting up a board game night for the term.

In other news this resource gathering thing for World of Warcraft is absolutely insane. It turns out that at 3.5s per bandage created it will take over a month of man-time to turn 800000 linen cloth into linen bandages. And that's totally neglecting the time needed to farm all that linen and turn them all in 20 at a time!

I've been gathering linen from underneath Orgrimmar, and the evil hordses have yet to kill me on my ventures into the dungeon there. Not for lack of trying though!

Narnian Fish

To this point I have handed in 460 spotted yellowtail, 40 purple lotus and 160 runecloth bandages. I also won an arena trinket, up to 9 now.

Went to see the Chronicles of Narnia movie last night. It's been many years since I'd read the books so I can't comment on the accuracy of the movie to the book. What I can say is I enjoyed the movie. And I think I may just read the books again.

Ahn'Qiraj?

The 1.9 patch for World of Warcraft came out, apparently to get into the new dungeons the whole server needs to do a lot of item turn-in quests. I'm doing my part by fishing up and cooking some Spotted Yellowtails from the waters around Stranglethorn Vale. I'm also getting some good fish to sell to alchemists for a reasonable amount of gold, so it's all good. I find fishing fun, too.

Juggernaut hits!

Managed to wake up in time to get a couple games of Warsong Gulch in with my 19 Paladin. A bunch of us out in New Brunswick have created level 19 characters that were twinking out so we can have fun smashing people in the low level battleground on World of Warcraft. In the two games I played yesterday we won both, with all 6 captures for our team coming from my guild, 'The Juggernaut'.

No one can compete with my mad healing skills. I also found a Skeletal Club for sale, so now I just need to decide between Crusader and Healing Power for an enchantment to put on it.

A Lazy Monday

Other than time spent working I pretty much just play World of Warcraft yesterday. Nothing terribly interesting happened, killed Avalanchion with my brother and he dropped his ring for me and an Essence of Earth, which was nice. We also leveled our mages a little on the pirates in Tanaris. There were 2 horde mages leveling there as well, and we got killed a few times by them, the big meanies.

Applied to a new guild yesterday, I've got my fingers crossed. Wish me luck. 8)

At the beginning with you

My New Year's resolution for this year, sadly enough, is to start a blog and see how long I can go updating it every day. I'm going to start today by laying out my rationale and ground rules I'm setting for myself. Who knows how it may evolve though.

First, a bit about me. My name is Nick Page, I'm 25 years old, I live in Waterloo, Ontario, and I am a semi-recent graduate of the University of Waterloo (B. Math, honours Computer Science, minor in Combinatorics and Optimization). I'm working a tech supportish job currently and am half-heartedly looking for a programming type job. You can pretty much sum up my life with three statements... Play games - Eat meat - Sleep.

My main goal is to write about the games that I play. I intend to write freeform, not going back over each line to correct spelling or grammar or to make sure it comes out just perfect. The reason for this is that I often spend hours and hours trying to think of the perfect way to phrase an email or a message board post or whatnot. I am going to allow myself to correct typoes in the last word/punctuation though, so while it may be a little incoherent at times it shouldn't be illegible as well.

The primary reason for doing this is so that I can reread my thoughts on things (especially games) years down the road, but there are lots of secondary reasons as well.

- I have an interest in doing serious testing, and it was recommended that working on your communication skills, for example by writing a blog, would be a big asset. I'd like all the assets I can get.

- To learn a bit about website, or at least blog, design.

- I used to be roommates with a couple people who wrote Magic:The Gathering articles for http://www.starcitygames.com/ back when I was a student. I always got a thrill out of reading about the exploits of people I knew in person, especially if I was somehow involved. I expect I will often know the people I write about, and I will likely find myself involved a fair bit. And hey, maybe someone I know will stumble across this at some point and get a kick out of reading about themselves.

- I am starting to give serious consideration to trying to make money (or at least break even and have fun) playing online poker. I've seen it recommended to keep track of each session so you can more objectively approach your game. Makes sense to me, and what better way to track progress than by writing about it every day. I also figure I can do the same sort of thing with Magic Online tournaments. Up to now I've just had a vague sense that I'm winning more often than losing but I have no real concrete proof. This will at least give me some stats to (poorly) analyze.

- To attract all the cute gamer girls out there. Ok... Not all. One would be quite sufficient. The cute part is just an added frill. The girl part, on the other hand, is non-negotiable.

- Who knows, maybe some random people out there will read a post and be entertained, or learn something about something random. That would be great!


At any rate, questions and comments, now or in the future, are always welcomed. I especially welcome criticism, constructive prefered but I can learn from even the meanest of complaints.