Archive for the “Serpentshrine Cavern” Category

Wow that was some serious downtime. Friday night’s Kara raid with Aerye on her first raid went well. We had a bit of a rough patch at first with Moroes, but he eventually died. All in all, her fears of wiping the raid often were mostly put to rest, since she only did it once, and that was with help from The Boyfriend. ::grin:: She got a lot of new gear out of the 4 bosses we did do, so that was all good.

I didn’t play much Saturday, having a afternoon out with a friend to do lunch and a movie instead. But Saturday night was the followup to do the second half of Kara. It went okay… right before my connection died. I did my usual shifting of routers and cables with no luck before getting the wise idea to check the TV. No TV service. After waiting around for 20 minutes or so, I gave up and went to bed.

Sunday was still a no go for online events, with no cable. They finally got it back up late Sunday night, too late for me to get online and do anything. Monday evening tho I managed to get online and get a little bit accomplished for my pally, finally getting the last bits of Sunken Temple quests done, thanks to Aerye escorting me and pulling the whole damned graveyard in Western Plaguelands, much to the annoyance (don’t care! pbbbbt! you jerks kept taking my kills! I’m looking at you, lvl 67 Rogue!) of the others there. She giggled gleefully and had much fun slaughtering things. I was just happy to get things off my lists. All that’s left now is the actual ST run. Hopefully this weekend that can get done.

Yesterday I logged in briefly and did more daily quests on Siana. I finally hit revered with the Netherwing, got a decent amount of greens, a crapton of leather, and of course nice gold for my troubles. Problem is, I seemed to have missed the announcement that we were raiding SSC last night, so I never logged back in after my afternoon dailies romp. :;headdesk:: Times like this, I feel like a total twit. Eh, it was the holidays, and I was thinking we were still off raids. That’ll teach me.

Tonight is Tidewalker in SSC, and yes, I WILL be going. Tomorrow night I’ll hopefully be wandering around in ZA, and if not, I’ll crank out a few dailies before attempting to get some sleep. Friday is more SSC, then Saturday and Sunday we go old school: Molten Core and Blackwing Lair. It’s been so long since I’ve been to either, and I’d barely raided there before work ate my lift for a while, that I’m going to have to go back and read up on the fights. it’s sure to be amusing, no matter what.

The holidays are halfway done for me. Christmas and Yule are done, and the New Year celebrations will start soon. In celebration of having a 5-ish day weekend, I celebrated by raiding for 3 nights. Sorta.

Friday night was supposed to be raiding in SSC, but with the holidays, that got scrapped. Instead, a bunch of people did heroics. I ended up having The Boyfriend and others get together and run Arcatrazso I could get a red Santa hat to complete my Santa suit. Saturday was the day I was looking forward to, as that was the day a bunch of us were getting a friend keyed for Kara, which we’d be running later that night. We went running with a tank that is still getting geared, my hunter, the Hunter Class Lead’s priest, The Boyfriend’s boomkin, and the friend on her Hunter. Loot was gained that -wasn’t- sharded, keys were gotten, and all had fun. Unfortunately, the poor friend ended up getting horribly ill and missed her first Kara.

I ended up on Kara on my mage except for Moroes… where I pulled in Siana for trap duty as usual. ::sigh:: It’s a good thing that I don’t really need anything off of him on my mage. Instead, I managed to luck out and snag the Ruby Slippers for the mage out of the Opera Event, didn’t die, was able to give decent dps (still working on the “great dps”), and felt pretty good by the time I went to bed.

Sunday was the second half of Kara, where I managed to get more loot for my mage, complete a quest, and get more rep. Yey me! Then it hit me: Kara will be empty on Monday… Mwhahaha, let the plot begin…

So when Monday rolled around, Friend found an email in her inbox asking “Yo! Poke me in IMs!” I kept checking the computer as I worked on cookies downstairs (mmm cookies), and finally saw her poke. That when I laid out my idea: there’s a whole Kara instance that’s cleared. There’s no mobs. Would she like a tour of Kara and to also get a couple of quests done? 15 minutes later, we were zoning in and she was drooling. She got pulled all around the place in the order that we normally run it, including the ducking back outside after the opera event to use the back door, skipping mobs while I played tour guide over Ventrilo. She got quests picked up and turned in, and is now ready to go in and kill things, giggling insanely all the way. Not too bad of a Christmas present in-game and a “sorry you missed it! But get excited, cos here’s what you’ll see next time!” gift.

Other than those events, I was out of game for the most part. I did hop in-game for a bit on Christmas Day to wish everyone well and talk with The Boyfriend for a bit. But overall, it was a quiet time in Azeroth for me. Tonight, I get back to things in-game, with a bunch of us doing a Arcatraz Key run since the Friday night run found five people, all standing outside Arc, all laughing cos none had the key. Cue musical toons soon after…

Last night was SSC again, with us taking on Lurker Below. He’s actually the first boss in there that we tackled, and I’m actually glad we went for him first when we started learning SSC. Hydross was a cakewalk in comparison.

The bad thing about last night, though, was that it seemed as though everyone had a case of the brain deads. I knew why I wasn’t quite at top form: lack of sleep will do that to a girl. But I was still pulling my weight and was probably at around 90% of my usual. I tend to be hyper-careful when I’m sleep deprived, not really wanting to be the cause of wiping a raid. We wiped again from tank aggro issues, but round 3 got the Lurker down. A few judiciously applied Misdirects helped the tank keep aggro, people finally stopped dying in the spouts and whirls (mostly), and loot was gotten. Wisely, the raid leaders called the raid after that, even if it was 30 minutes before we normally would have ended. We were a little disappointed in this run, since hardly any purple items dropped from the trash. We’ve gotten spoiled with how many we’ve gotten in past weeks. Last night? One. Ah well.

Saturday night, it’s Tidewalker learning time. Whee!

Last night was raid night on Gruul’s Lair, followed by SSC and Hydross. I was suffering from a lack of sleep from enthusiastic baking and no pre-raid nap due to a promise to escort The Boyfriend’s latest alt through Blackfathom Deeps before his quests for there turned grey. Yeah, he would have let me take the nap, but I felt my conscience poking me to get it done before he outgrew the quests and the gear. So his shammy ended up following a night elf hunter with a bad case of “kill everything!” tunnel vision. I got so locked into “next! ::smack:: Next! ::smack:: Next!” that I have no idea how long it was from when he asked me if we were going to kill an optional boss or not, to when I actually answered. Whoops.

By the time raid time rolled around, I was really feeling the effects of sleep deprivation. Ah raiding with 5 hours of sleep! I will say that after a certain time, the numbness that hits is actually quite peaceful. And if my brain stopped trying to process anything, like the big-ass ugly ogre coming for me, I’d have fallen over snoring. As it was, I’m glad that I have 3 or 4 different addons that all yell at me “Yo! Dumbass! You have AGGRO!” cos I think I needed all of them to smack me around to either slow down on the dps or feign death.

Kids, let this be a lesson to you: friends don’t let friends raid sleep dep’d. Or if you do, at least make sure they have aggro alarm addons turned on.

High King Maulgar was our usual kill, meaning we probably could have one-shotted them if Krosh hadn’t resisted our mage’s spell-steal. Personally, I think the devs slipped in some code that checks to see who’s attacking Krosh. If it’s our mage, a whole different set of code is used. Our poor mage has the worst luck with him sometimes. After getting HKM down on the second try, we moved on to Gruul. And boy do I wish I’d taken a screenshot of that ending kill shot. We had the usual bit of “Hey! Quit running for me for the shatter!” “What? You ran for ME!” we’ve had as of late, then a couple of unfortunate dps deaths. I saw the percentage on Gruul, figured we might have to come back for round #2, but then said “screw it” and just kept going.

Then The Boyfriend, our Main Tank, went down. Gruul was loose. People are yelping in Vent, bodies are hitting the ground all over the place, this large ugly drooling thing is stomping all around the room, and I started unloading every trinket, ability, and cooldown I had. If there had been an item called “Kitchen Sink”, it would have been thrown at him. When he finally died, there were 8 of us left standing. I know we had at least two rogues left standing, and I think two healers. The other 3 people, other than myself, were a blur. Awake? Oh yeahhh, that woke me up! Then I got a case of the giggles cos our Krosh mage, a guy that used to be guaranteed to die at least twice on every raid cos he puts out so much dps and threat (except recently. not sure how he managed to keep up the DPS and not gain as much threat), sends me a tell asking “okay what the hell did you do? You change specs? You’re -above- me in DPS and you’re usually not even close!” Mwhahaha… I’m coming for you, Mage-boy!

Loot was passed out, we all ported back to Shatt, then went to SSC. It was being fairly uneventful when my connection died right as we were starting a pull. I’ve noticed that around midnight, it cuts out. This is not good. Cable company will be yelled at. Not tonight. But soon. Very very soon. I got back and Hydross was pulled. Bad Things happened and we wiped. Well, everyone else wiped and I lived. So I got to a safe spot, chatted with the Hunter Lead… then found my connection had dropped. Again. More swearing on my part, along with a fast reconnection, and racing into the Hydross fight, which thankfully had just started. We got him down on try #2, I believe with him enraging (which is a Bad Thing). By that point, my giddiness over out-dpsing the mage, living through the Gruul fight, and over-all “woot!” had worn off and I was about to fall asleep at the keyboard. As soon as the loot was passed out, I fled SSC with everyone else, and promptly logged.

Tonight, we’re headed back to SSC to smack down Lurker, then continue our learning of Morogrim. And tonight, I am going to -try- to get that nap in before raid.

Okay so Friday night’s SSC run wasn’t -that- bad. I just came out of it in a very “meh” mood. I blame that on the mixup in my head of what I was doing which night, along with a general lack of sleep. Apparently I made up for that by sleeping most of Saturday, which just left me groggy and out of it for my mage’s run through Kara.

I’d -wanted- to get one more piece of the Frozen Shadowweave set made before Kara. I did manage to ding tailoring enough to be able to make it, but I’m lacking materials. Part of me feels bad for not logging in and farming mats, but real life has been occupying my time as of late. I also discovered that I suck in kiting as a mage. Either that, or I was even more out of it than I thought. -.- 

Yesterday was an off day for me. Why? I was needing the time off (still so damned sleepy) and I needed to cook. Tonight is even more cooking and most likely not gaming. Again. Sheesh. Never going to get anything done at this rate. Damn you, Life!

I logged in a little early for Kara in the hopes of getting some tailoring done. I was greeted with a whisper of “Kara’s tomorrow night. SSC tonight.” I resisted the impulse to kill The Boyfriend then yell at the heavens over the Cruel Fate(TM) bestowed to me, then sighed, got my made to 365 tailoring, trained the next piece of Frozen Shadowweave, and switched to my hunter.

I had actually been looking forward to Kara tonight. It was going to be a little change of DPS pace, but still fun. This was a good thing since I had a back that was killing me and was exhausted from the week. Don’t get me wrong, I love raiding. I was looking forward to Morogrim. But just not tonight.

As usual for a raid wipe night, it took us a while to work through all the trash. We’re still learning it, and reminding each other “See those guys? Yeah. Don’t touch them.” Sheep was broken all over the place, causing at least one wipe if not two. Hey, after a while, all the death starts to blend together. When we finally got to the boss, we went over the strat, set up the raiid, and got him to around 82% for our first attempt. Not too bad for us. We actually lived through the first round of murlocs and were doing well til the second round came plowing through. Pretty much after that, though, we were all over the place. Focus was being lost, people were distracted and doing stupid things, and after we got back from the 3rd or 4th wipe, we found all the trash had respawned. Since it had taken us over an hour to clear it to begin with, we decided to call the raid.

I did manage to pick up a new purple leatherworking pattern for Belt of Natural Power. Even more amusingly, it dropped twice in a row. So the druid leatherworker that had rolled against me also got one. I was tempted to ask if there was some way we could rez those two mobs and keep beating them to death to get more patterns, since they were feeling so generous.

End result? Epic pattern, a decent repair bill, knowledge gained, and we are so going to have to work on the healers and their aggro at the transition. /salute to the healers. Good luck, guys. You’re going to need it.