The View Through The Branches

After the comments on my pet post, I decided maybe I could give camping Jadefang and the shale spider a go.

And, well…

All I can say is:

Fuck yeaaaaaaaaaaaaa

And I managed to build up a list of the thirteen pets that are currently in game and achievable for me – 3 holiday pets, 3 purchasable and 7 grindable. So today, I’m going to take a look at mounts.

I actually had a horrendous moment of realisation when I thought about my pets guide and how it’s going to have to change with Mists. I reckon I’ll do it, and it’ll be something I’m bloody proud of, but it might not be quick!

Real Life wise, as I know everyone definitely gives a damn, I’ve been inching closer to having lost 2 stone in weight (or I was, until this weekend, when I somehow managed to put 4.5lbs on in 3 days), everything is going all sorts of awesome, all sorts of happy, and I’m giddy excite about most things. Work has all sorts of scary and exciting and interesting things going down as well, so if I do go dark, it’ll be because of work going all sorts of bat shit crazy.

ANYHOW!

Mounts.

Sitting at 22nd on the  Terokkar rankings, I’d like to be in the top 20 before the end of Cataclysm.

Collected: 133

Missing: 58

WELL, there’s a few of these I can remove from that list of 58 right away

Because, as with pets, I’m not forking out ALL the monies for mounts, which means that a few of them are OUT right away; I won’t be buying the Amani Dragonhawk (~£130), The Big Battle Bear (~£60), Blazing Hippogryph (~£170), Corrupted Hippogryph (~£100), Magic Rooster (~£160), Mottled Drake (~£130), Riding Turtle (~£95), Savage Raptor (~£135), Swift Spectral Tiger (£450), Wooly White Rhino (~£170), X-51 Nether-Rocket-X-TREME (~£180), Spectral Tiger (~£400) or X-51 Nether Rocket (~£180).

That’s 13 down, 45 still viable.

World Events are a bit of a kicker, mounts wise

Due to the incredibly low drop rates of the two remaining world event mounts I don’t have. Although I can’t guarantee I will get these, having 9 capped characters (although the likelihood of them all being up to level 90 the next time these holidays come round is low) means farming up the Headless Horseman’s Mount and Love Rocket will not be EASIER, but will at least give me a slightly better chance.

That does however put me at 135 possibles.

Time to grind some tokens…

If I man up and do the grinding I should do, collect 300 crystal powder and (as I already have the battle tokens) I should be able to walk away with two new talbuks. Along with several months more (seeing as my motivation has dropped down to purely doing the monthlies/dailies once a month) of grinding the Darkmoon Faire, now I have all the pets, I could pick up the two mounts. Four easily achievable mounts right there.

That takes me to 139 possible mounts.

Oh look, 2 free mounts

Or if not free, incredibly cheap. I’m an engineer, yet for some reason don’t have either of the engineer only flying machines. Two more mounts right there, knocks me up to 141.

Profession wise, there are also two grindy mounts I haven’t bothered with, but should. Archaeology and Fishing both offer up the chance at a mount each, which would put me up to 143. I’m also obliterating the flying carpets from these counters, as I’m not a tailor and won’t ever be on Elsen. 44 viable mounts. If only I wasn’t so lazy when it came to grinding.

There are also a lot of mounts that are simply grind fests – drops in instances and raids.

There are some I can solo now, and really, should be doing on a daily basis. Both Rivendare’s Deathcharger and the Raven Lord are easily soloable by me, as is Attumen for the Fiery Warhorse. That’s 146.

There are a few that I can’t solo (I’m a terrible chicken and therefore Skadi kills me) and lots of raid drops.

The Blue Proto-Drake, Ashes of A’lar, Azure Drake, Blue Drake and Vitreous Stone Drake whilst not soloable now, should be soloable OR duo-able in Mists. Onyxia should also go on this list, as should the VoA mount. As should, ideally, the tiger and raptor from Zul’Gurub – 155 right there.

Some are still a long way off being easy to farm

such as the Yogg+0 Mimiron’s Head, LK HC Invincible, and all the Cataclysm raid drop mounts.

Although they exist as achievable, I’m not pushing them on my total right now:

This is narrowing down the field some what…

There are a couple of other *grindy* mounts that come from rare world drops – both of which are viable for me to get, just unlikely. These are the White Camel, the Subdued Seahorse, the Phosphorescent Stone Drake and the Time Lost Proto Drake.

There is one mount I’m going to grab pretty soon

Which is the rocket – one more month of sub from my second account and it’ll be mine! Just before it disappears from the game too, which is ace!

And one mount I’m probably never going to get, because I’m a cheapskate:

And then there are some achievement rewards. 

Again, it’s unlikely I’m going to pick these up before the end of Cataclysm, but, if WotLK content has been anything to go by, I look forward to running old content and clearing up these metas once Mists is released:

And also, if my plans for a casual RBG team come about, I look forward to picking this mount up too:

Which leaves me with one last mount, that I’m farming for every three days and who refuses to appear.

I HATE YOU GREEN PROTO DRAKE.

I’m slowly slowly pottering towards Mists of Pandaria with a bucket list as long as my arm. Whereas some of my goals have been shunted into the solidly “unachievable” (read: can’t be arsed to arena) in some ways things are moving on quite nicely.

My mage is a good 50% through level 84 now, and when she hits 85 that’ll be my 9th level 85 character. My goblin horde side is level 27 so getting close to 30, which was her first “point”, although I haven’t really looked at my other horde characters.

I finally transmogged both my priest and my paladin, and I did a major pet hunt on my hunter – which made me realise I *really* need to open up the Molten Front dailies on her, for access to the spiders, crabs, metal beasts and the spirit beasts of the Regrowth, if nothing else.

I also found out some pretty impressive (read: embarrassing) stats the other day. Terokkar is, as we all know, a bit of a backwater, and it turns out when it comes to pet collectors on said backwater, I’m pretty much up there.

Whereas I’m languishing in the middle on some of the charts:

and it’s a little out of date – I’m on 12845 now.

(the top achievement point person on Terokkar is sitting at 14305, and the top Jane Doe-er on 13340),

(top mount person on Terokkar is sitting on 156…)

when it comes to pets I’m frighteningly near the top:

I’m not sure if I should be proud or horrified of this.

Anyway, it’s made me think a little about mounts and pets that I’m missing as we push towards Mists.

Whereas the entirity of the pets system is going to be obliterated and changed, mounts are very much staying the same – there aren’t going to be 500 new ones for example.

So really, it makes sense for me to make a nice little list of what I’m missing, and the chances of getting some of these.

So, here we go.

Pets:

Collected: 174 (again, that’s a little out of date)

Missing: 27

There are several pets in existance Blizzard clearly deems unachievable for me so I won’t cover them.

Achievement Rewards:

I still don’t have Lil’Tarecgosa, and the likelihood of me getting it seems low as we have a shed load of half finished staffs in guild and nobody with a finished one.  This is mildly frustrating but not really anything I can fix.

Patience & Grinding

Never been my strong point, have they?

There are a few BoP pets that I’d simply have to grind out myself to get them.

The Fox Kit, Magical Crawdad, Sea Pony & Giant Sewer Rat would all take me just sitting down and grinding for hours at a time. Although I like these pets, the likelihood of this happening is low. I just find it hard to see grinding something out which *may never appear* a worthwhile waste of my gaming time. I wish I did, because I’d have so much more cool stuff. I just tend to keep FINDING other things to do.

And the Crawling Claw comes under the same cover as it is also horribly grindy:

The Tiny Shale Spider also comes under this umbrella, as although it’s a guaranteed drop, actually camping the spawn point is a trial in itself.

It ain’t ever gonna happen:

I like Warcraft, but I don’t like Warcraft enough to pay over a grand for a vanity pet:

This means that the Zergling, Panda Cub and Mini Diablo are all TOTALLY out, as are Frosty and the netherwhelp (although WoW doesn’t even count that in their pets listing for me).

I’m also going to include in here a variety of TCG pets that are simply too much for me to fork out for – Bananas (~£50), the Tuskarr Kite (~£65), Dragon Kite (~£120), Hippogryph Hatchling (~£45), Ethereal Soul-Trader (~£230), Rocket Chicken (~£70) and Spectral Tiger Cub (~£120).

I also refuse to pay for CE’s of games I have very little interest in, which means no Mini Thor or Fetish Shaman for Sophs:

I suppose if I must fork out some cash…

It’s likely I’m going to fork it out into these two:

as I can grab a Cataclysm CE for just £35 on eBay, and the grell is less than a fiver. I’ll also probably pick up the Sand Scarab when it finally enters the game. Those three would push me to 177.

I also have no objection to forking out in-game cash

which means I am continuously checking the Auction House for the last hatchling that I’m missing from the game, the Gundrak raptor:

That’s 178 achievable pets.

So apparently I have patience for some things

and am REFUSING to pay for a Horde Festival Lantern, as I now have enough horde to pick one up myself when next February comes around. So although it’s a long time coming, this pet WILL be mine, and for free.

That’s 180, right?

RNG always comes into play

in that there are two other holiday, BoP, RNG horrible pets that I haven’t got yet which will hopefully eventually be mine. I did open presents every day for Lumpy last year, but never got him. I missed last year’s Midsummer, so hoping for the Frostling this year, and the holiday is quite soon.

That takes me to 182 pets, 188 if I actually work on my grindy pets. When I look at it, it’s unlikely I’m going to push about 180 pre Mists, although that’d be a nice goal to aim for.

Viable or not, what do you think?

Currently coasting on my high of seeing the best concert EVER last night, and see this glorious example of MAN thrusting his way through the Backstreet Boys Greatest Hits for three hours (yes I was that close, that is taken without zoom, and I did become a jibbering mess of female hormones):

So, I thought I’d work through some of my screenshots over the past 6 months or so. This will be a long post so…feel free to get bored. I’m using this as a recap over my past six months in game and probably going to split it into months…

August 2011

So, I log back into the game on 31st August 2011 with all but one character Horde and feeling oh-so-unsure of myself. Elsen is still mid faction change and name-reversion and so I can’t log in to her. So what do I do…I log in to my only alliance character left, a level 41 druid called Sophronia. I was in Feralas, and I didn’t do much, pottered around with addons, did a couple of quests…mostly just looked around me in awe. I’d forgotten how amazingly beautiful Azeroth was, and even Feralas – not a zone I adore to be honest, was just so gorgeous.

Of course the second thing I did was find Zal, and we had an awesome giggle just being back in the same game together again. Obviously the major thing I had missed was the entirity of Patch 4.2, and with it Firelands. And….mushrooms. Mushrooms you could sit on. The only other thing I notice about this is….god damn, my old PC’s graphics were awful!!

September 2011

Elsen was mine again and *obviously* the first thing I did was go meet Zal. Obviously I was on a new server, so we couldn’t meet up in game. So…it was the Stockades.

Pre 4.3…. no transmog!

My next step was to potter on through the Thrall & Aggra questline. According to my screenies folder I went a little mad with the Print Screen button.

I was pretty solitary at this point and just meandered around the world picking up achievements…for some reason it seems like I did this with no actual coherent plan or pathway…

I also decided to carry on doing Loremaster (for the second time – free achievement points!) and mopping up the cooking and fishing dailies, some of which provided some amusing visual effects:

Having quit the game when ZG/ZA had just been introduced and were horrendously horribly overtuned, I never really finished them or went even more than part way through ZG I think. However Zal suggested we potter through so I agreed and…it went quite well.

Some things about the game hadn’t changed however, Zal was still grinding out archaeology aiming for his Tol’vir mount, and at that point it wasn’t going all that well…

October 2011

I got a little bit more into the swing of things but to be honest still stayed pretty solitary. I was very much noobing my way through a lot of the game – the Molten Front dailies for example. I found stuff that intrigued me…

And then scared the SHIT out of me:

I was also super pleased when I picked up a couple more pets and knocked myself over the next big hurdle:

I then decided I really should get back into PvP and spent a lot of my evenings working on my PvP achievements including seeing some of the more interesting ones knocked off my list.

But I have to say the most satisfying achievement of all was most finally finally hitting a special milestone:

November 2011

Overall, November was a pretty quiet month for me. I very satisfyingly pushed my arena wins across the 300 mark, and then promptly quit doing arena. I do, however, wear the tabard with pride – in both my untransmogged PvP gear and my transmogged PvE gear (it matches).

I also finished a couple of bigger grinds off and netted myself a feat of strength and the current-final tier of reputation achievements.

Also, whilst being a bit obsessed with PvP, I started honing my skills as uber flag carrier.

December 2011

December was when things got a little busier. Someone stupidly challenged me to a levelling competition so I blasted my warlock up to 85. There were also definitely some funnies.

At this point I was running the HoT instances each week for some Valor Points, and spent a decent amount of time trying to make conversation with people who clearly just wanted me to GO AWAY.

I also FINALLY bought a Battered Hilt, and embarked on that epic questline.

January 2012

In January, I really felt like I was getting back in to the swing of things. Spent a lot of time on my alts and briefly (got bored pretty fast…) worked on gearing up two of my other healers, my Disc priest and holy Paladin.

Also did some horde levelling:

Suffered some problems with engineering:

Suffered at the hands of the Horde:

And occasionally OWNED the Horde:

Whilst dealing with some unusually inventive Alliance players (who knew Warlocks, Rogues and Druids could cast slow fall):

Finally did some satisfying mopping-up of early Cata achievements:

Of course, spent a lot of time with my wonderful best friend:

And best of all, I started raiding:

Although I still managed to get mixed up occasionally….

February 2012

February – another lovely month and when I started running my old content raids again. They were a LOT of fun and have opened me up to people and friends I never thought I’d interact with. Bringing in cross realm raiding was the most spectacular decision Blizzard have ever made and I love them for it.

Old content also allowed me to finally finish off my ICC 25 Man meta achievement making me a very happy Sophs:

However I think the most marvellous of our achievements so far was our experiements into ToGC, with this kill being the perfect ending to the evening:

- and yes, that is right. I was the last one left alive, I was on 238 health, and Anub DID die to an insect swarm dot.

As always, Mr Lewis was around being his most spectacular self, keeping me entertained throughout.

Carried on knocking our some impressive achievements:

Experienced the odd bit of in-the-world random comedy:

Had many giggles in guild:

Made a new friend in Chris:

And got some excellent kills in Dragon Soul:

March 2012

March was another awesome month, and another very busy one.

The Deadbeat’s carried on pottering through Dragon Soul, grabbing achievements and fresh kills:

Old content continued to be a roaring success:

My friends continued to be hilarious:

I even got myself a legendary!

I did some more levelling and we started a little Horde guild:

And of course, more PvP!

April 2012

OK, so it’s not the end of April yet, but we’re pretty damn close.

April is a pretty ace month.

As always, it wouldn’t have been anywhere near as awesome without my friends:

I did a bit of trolling whilst levelling my mage…

this dude – we all wiped, he wouldn’t run in, I initiated a vote kick with the reason “lazy little shit”. It passed. Turns out after all that he was from Terokkar.

There was some more random PvP comedy:

We finished up in Dragon Soul so ran some random older content with the DDs, netting me the awesome fire kitty staff and some old T11 achievements:

The little pink blob then under all that worm’s flames is our RL/GM getting his ass handed to him in the middle of a trash respawn.

And that’s it….the past 6 months of my WoW life. A massive thank you to all my guildies and friends – won’t embarrass you by naming names, you know who you are – who have made my return to wow and especially 2012 so far absolutely bloody brilliant.

Thanks, chaps.

Elsen

x

A special Noblegarden themed comic from Kaicie this week!

Enjoy

Trying to be careful as always, I’ve gone through all my guides and checked for any updates and changes.

The posts below have all been updated to reflect additions/changes:

Vanity Pets in WoW: Part 4 – Professions (BoP & BoE), TCG & Blizzard Pet Store

Mounts in WoW Part 3 – Achievement Rewards, Guild Achievements, Quest Rewards, Blizzcon/Blizzard Store, SoR & RaF

Mounts in WoW Part 6 – Class Mounts, World Drops/Grinds, TCG, Arena & the Unknowns!!

A Selection of Sites: Warlock Blogs and Websites

A Selection of Sites: Transmogrification

A Selection of Sites: RP & Lore Websites and Blogs

A Selection of Sites: Rogue Sites & Blogs

A Selection of Sites: Shaman Sites & Blogs

A Selection of Sites: Priest Blogs & Sites

A Selection of Sites: Paladin Sites & Blogs

A Selection of Sites: Mage Blogs & Sites

A Selection of Sites: Hunter Websites & Blogs

A Selection of Sites: Gold Making Blogs

A Selection of Sites: General Warcraft Blogs

A Selection of Sites: Feral Druid Blogs & Websites

A Selection of Sites: Restoration Druid Blogs & Websites

A Selection of Sites: Balance Druid Blogs & Websites

A Selection of Sites: Death Knight Blogs & Websites

Please note you can find links to all of these in my “Guides” section up top!

The latest installment of Chris’ comic is now live - titled “Warlocks, sigh!”

So I’ve been slacking and totally forgot to highlight this: Kaicie’s most recent comic featuring yours truly and our GM…

I don’t do this very often but I just want to point out this article, by Glow, on artifact hunting in Rift.

I love it. It’s amazing.

Ooo it’s a long time since I started my bucket list so I thought maybe now would be a good time to do an update!

My General goals were:

Have 9 level 85s – I’m now quite comfortably progressing with this. I’ve got 8 level 85s (having dinged my second priest) and I’ve got my mage up to 65. My second druid is still languishing at 41 however. 

Have all professions maxed out – this goal is complete!

Have experienced all Horde starting stories – I’ve changed this to level 30 after talking to the ever knowledgeable Rades about horde quest progression. I’ve got my blood elf warrior to 30, where she now stays, and my goblin hunter to 17.

Have 50k gold – sitting on just over 40k now. Whether I’ll hit 50 for mists or not is an unknown, but I’d like to.

Next we’ve got Elsen, my main. 

Always my main, always will be, Elsen is of course the most important character in my roster. She will be the first picked up and levelled when Mists is released.

My goals for her pre-Mists are:

Achievement Points:

- have the most achievement points in guild – currently sitting in second, I have about 400 points to go to catch up on the leader. A secondary – highly unlikely – goal would be to hit 13,000 achievement points. - this isn’t going as well as hoped! I’ve actually been overtaken and am sitting in third now, still static at about 400 points behind the leader. I’m aiming instead for 13000 points, rather than guild first.

PvP:

- complete my Cataclysmic PvP set – although this will not be 100% possible because I doubt I’m going to hit 2200 to get the heroic versions. Just the basic S11 to the extent I can achieve it will do me.  I’m going alright on this. I’m missing belt, boots, trinkets, 1 ring and a neck – so well on the way to completion.

- hit 1550 in 2v2  - as I no longer do arena, it’s looking like all of these arena goals are unlikely, so I’ve scratched them off the list.

- hit 1550 in 3v3

- complete the total Master of Wintergrasp achievement – I’m just missing the 6 minute win and the generic wins.  - I went through a phase of making an effort to log for WG but that has slacked off again. It’s tedious and I forget to log in, basically. I could probably do with picking up an add on that triggers a timer.

- complete the total Master of Tol Barad achievement – Here just got a couple of easy enough achievements and then the Veteran to do.  as above, I could knock this one out in a month if I tried. I really should make the effort.

Reputation:

- Max out my Steamwheedle Cartel reputation. I’m sitting at revered with all of them, so time to start grinding some pirates! - not really had any progression on the pirates so still at revered.

- Max out my Hydraxian Waterlords reputation - managed this! Hit exalted last week and got my Sulfuras at the same time. Very satisfying I have to say.

Achievements:

- mop up and complete the entirety of the Wrath of the Lich King raiding achievements in that tab. - I inch ever closer to this all the time. I’ve got LK 25 HC now and my ICC meta, I just need a couple of odd Ulduar 25 achievements and then it’s mostly ten man.

- try my best to finish Salty  - I never fish. I’m lazy and I slack terribly.

- grab Earth, Wind & Fire on 10 man - still not even *looked* at this although I may suggest it to our RL for a nice evening finish one night in a normal raid *hint hint*

- net 25,000 Honor Kills – Sitting on 13k at the moment, I have’t PvPed much recently as my time has been spent on my alts. Not sure if 25k is achievable pre Mists or not.

- net 25,000 Valor Points - sorted – picked this up early January.

- try and grab as many PvP achievements as possible (ambiguous I know!) - as above, my PvP has been lacking recently. 

- finish up LK 5 man tab, and Cata 5 man tab - got some plans in the works to go back through and clear out some of these, so hoping to get this done over the next month or so.

- finish off the Battered Hilt questline & enough tokens for the Argent Pony. - I am currently in the process of bribing my friends to come help me with this. I really should get on it.

Pets & Mounts:

- farm up to 175 pets if possible (166 at the moment) - currently sitting on 171 pets so very close! I got my last missing crocolisk the other day from the daily, and one more DMF pet. My last four will probably be made up of the Darkmoon Zeppelin (last I need to get all DMF pets), Legs (Children’s Week), the Gregarious Grell (TCG) and then either the Gundrak Hatchling or the Festival Lantern (the horde side Lunar Festival pet). Once I’ve got those everything else is a “grind” and therefore unlikely to be undertaken by me because I am lazy.

- farm up to 125 mounts if possible (116 at the moment) – I’ve passed this goal! I’m now sitting on 132 mounts. I’m not going to set a new goal pre-Cata, I’ve got more than enough.

Finally we have the alts

I had a bit of an LFR burnout and stopped running it, which means all of my level 85s are pretty much static where they were left.

This point forward:

I need a bit of a plan of attack from this point forward. This is (in this order of priority, providing me with a nice handy list to tick off):

Alliance Levelling

- Get my mage to 85, get my druid to 85

Horde Level 30s

- Goblin to 30, Orc to 30, Tauren to 30, Troll to 30, Undead to 30

Level 85s

- Sapphrina “finished” (transmogged with appropriate title), Baeletha finished, Nyoma finished, Ellenaie finished, Corin finished, Issabela finished, Yessika finished.

Mopping Up

- achievements, pets, et al.

So, I think I’ve made quite a decent bit of progress but there’s still LOTs to do. I need to get on the mage and push her to 85 and then get on my horde really. How is everyone else handling their Cataclysm bucket lists?