Why hello there...

It's funny what you can find when you aren't looking.

A couple days ago, I had my neglected troll hunter Rajji out, doing his Firelands dailies so he could open the vendor to get his gun and scope schematics, when I happened to fly over a big blue surprise. About a minute later, Raj had a new buddy.


This is his third spirit beast, joining Wraith (Gondria) and Snowcloud (Loque). And unless I happen to stumble over Karoma and can't resist, that will be all for Rajji.

Shortly afterwards, Raj was working on the dailies in Molten Front, and found a certain hyperactive green spider. After looking up the taming technique on wowhead, I gave it a try. Well, okay, a few tries. Okay fine, he whooped poor Rajji's tail and I finally had to admit defeat, after many deaths. Raj just didn't have the HP or the amount of haste to beat Kirix's stunning poison(even with sis bringing her hunter Booggah, with a core hound, to help). I didn't give up completely though. See, Rajji has this thing with green pets, and Kel's Fidget (Deth'tilac) has made me sort of like the Firelands spider model. So I figured I would just work on Rajji's gear a bit, and try again another day.

Well, I was doing Arien's dailies today (for the same reasons, yay for multiple engineers?), when I found Kirix up again. I decided what the heck, and switched to Rajji, who had stocked up on haste elixirs and speed potions, and was parked by Kirix's path. It took a few more deaths, and I finally asked my sis to bring Booggah and his core hound to help again, but finally Raj's tame beat Kirix's stun. I think the neighbors probably heard me cheering afterwards. XD


After taking so long to tame, with so much frustration, (and so many repair bills,) he totally earned that name. >.>

So after that was over sis ran around a bit looking for the rest of the fire spiders, and found Solix sitting in his lava pool. We looked up the taming process for him, and (with a bit of encouraging from me) she had a go at taming him. It was ridiculously easy, compared to Kirix's stubbornness. It was pretty amusing to see and hear her reaction to having a spider following her around afterwards. (She doesn't seem nearly as tolerant of them as me. Yet.)


The name was my idea. >.> She said he needed a cute, innocent name, and that was what popped into my head. :D

So now Rajji has exactly 3 stable slots left, and I think I'm saving them for any new pets Blizzard gives us in MoP. He has a couple pets that I'm not really attached to, but I'd rather not let any of them go, since they weren't exactly easy to tame. That's okay though, because it's just more encouragement for me to go finish leveling Max. :D

Speaking of leveling, Talia the rogue is now 64 and still going. \o/
/Waves!

A Pair of Dings

I have had a couple characters hit some milestones recently. Firstly, my little formerly-Blood-Elf-but-now-human rogue, Talia got a few runs through Ramparts, (courtesy of Jahira,) with a couple quests mixed in to bump her xp a bit. Not long after run #3, this finally happened-


(Next up, Blood Furnace/Slave Pens/ Underbog. Whooo!)
The whole reason I faction-changed her was, no matter how much I want to play my lil rogue, it would only take a few minutes for me to get bored and lonely on Horde-side. Now that she's on Alliance, I have a lot more fun playing her, where I have chat channels and friends to keep me company. I may actually make my goal of getting her to 85 before the expansion! (Maybe...)

And next, I have my newest maxed character. And boy did it take long enough. Poor Cad, he went through my little issue with getting a toon close to 85 and then having a short burn-out phase. But last night, I finally finished the last couple bubs of xp he needed, and then Ding!



Hooray for another gear grind, eh? Although, this one won't be so bad, because he's an old, familiar character, and I really enjoy shadow-priesting. He already had some epics waiting for him to level, thanks to Kel's justice points and Rynia's tailoring. I ran him through the Firelands starting quests and Thrall's chain, so he's all set for normal heroics. I just hope I don't have too many fail-PuGs before he can get into the DS heroics. My previous experiences with Jahira and Rynia weren't all that encouraging, though. :P

I've been spending a lot of time on LotRO lately. My tax return got me a one-year subscription, so I've been messing around with the monster-play PvP side, mostly on Laurelin. So far, my warg is rank 4, weaver (aka spider) is rank 2, and my reaver and defiler are both rank 1. Not too bad, considering that all of them but the warg are new additions, and the spider is the only other one that I play seriously. (The others are just to goof around with and farm extra commendations.) I have a war leader on Windfola, but I don't play very much on that server, so I've been thinking of making one on Laurelin as well. I think I want to get my current toons ranked up a bit more, and get more of their skills, first.

Funny thing about my spider... I'm actually arachnophobic IRL, and it doesn't help much that LotR's spiders are fairly realistic-looking. But after watching this person's videos, I just had to make one, and it's actually been very fun. Like, even kind of cute, in a omgkeepitawayfromme sort of way. I'll probably have another post to show my Creeps off a bit sometime. ;D

Lastly, I'm starting to actually pay attention to the Mists of Pandoria info coming out, and I'm starting to get excited. There's still some stuff that I will have to see to decide if I like it or not, (like talent changes and pet battles,) but most of it sounds really interesting and fun. Oh yea, Windstar is totally gonna be able to shapeshift into a stag. That could not possibly be more epic. If I didn't have so much stuff to do before then, I would be practically bouncing of the walls with impatience. XD

Well, that's it for now. Off to terrorize more hobbits in the Moors! /Waves

Whew!!

So, I mentioned not long ago how Kel was stuck on 98/100 mounts for her achievement. Well, today my OCD kicked in, and I had a little grinding spree.

First attempt- heroic Utgarde Pinnacle. No blue proto drake. :(

Next, Karazan. Midnight did not want to come home with Kel. :(

Next, heroic Magister's Terrace, with Pitch along in case the pet dropped. No pet, but Kel finally got some loot-luck. :D


Clearly, I need to have Pitch tag along more often... >.>

After that, PvP seemed like the quickest way to get #100, since Kel only had one of the PvP mounts, and had just over 800 honor at the time. Hooray for Isle of Conquest weekend!












Now the only problem is, pretty mount should have pretty pet to sit beside it (when it's on the ground, anyways). However, Kel would have to let one of her current pets go. :(

Although, I'm not really very attached to her snake, even if he is gorgeous. So it might be a possibility in the near future. For now, I'm going to bask in my accomplishment.

Which reminds me... This is only adding to the odd (but nice) trend, when every time RL starts getting too much to handle, something in this game happens to make it a little easier to bear. First the incredibly easy time I had with Max camping for Loque, and now this. It may only be a temporary distraction, but hey, I'll take what I can get. I may go back to feeling like crap tomorrow, but for today, life doesn't seem all that bad.

Unexpected

So, Max has been continuing his 'level to a certain point and then camp for a pet' routine. His current project was getting to 76 and then looking for Loque'nahak. The getting-to-76 part was easy enough, but I never expected the second part to work out this well.


Frozen kitty!


With his new buddy.

It was almost funny. I had both my acounts going, and was doing archeology on Rynia, pausing every so often to do a lap around the Basin. I had just finished one such lap, and decided to park at one of the gorilla spawn points to afk again for a bit. Well, when I stopped at the first point I reached, I swear something was telling me to go check the other spawn before I went back to Ryn. NPCScan went off as soon as I got within reach. It was almost like Loque wanted me to come find him.

He's not named yet. I'm thinking of just sitting Max and Kel somewhere and trying a few words in Darnassian, and see if something clicks. That will have to wait a while, though, because I'm already running late for work. >.<

/Waves

It's About Time

After too many heroic Sethekk Halls runs to count, Kel finally has mount #98.



I have to admit, I was really inconsistent while farming this thing. But still, it took a lot of runs for it to drop. I'm so happy I don't have to go back in there. (Until I get the crazy urge to have the mount on another alt... :P)

Kel finally got exalted with Gilneas a little before the Sethekk run, so the mountain horses made mounts 96 and 97. Now she just needs either a bit more luck on drops, (been farming the blue proto drake, and plan on going after the white hawkstrider too,) or a lot of pvp for the honor mounts. She's getting closer to having enough tokens for one of the Tol Barad mounts, too. (Getting the drake first because it's pretty >.>)(I just wish Alliance would have control of TB more often :\) I'm actually starting to believe she'll have the dragonhawk soon(-ish).

I've been alt'ing some lately too. My warlock Rynia got some End Time heroics done today, and got over 10 ilvls in the process. And my shadow priest Cadèrly is working his way through level 84. Which means soon I'll have yet another max character to grind gear on. Although, this time I think it's a good thing, because I've missed my lil priest. He's one of my oldest characters, the only one that got in any vanilla raiding content, (even if it was only a bit of MC trash farming and a couple ZG runs,) and he's been rather neglected since his faction change several months ago. It's been fun working on him, almost like spending time with an old friend that you haven't seen for a while. /nostalgia

Well, that's all I can think of for now. /waves

New doodles

I had another drawing binge a few days ago, and I'm pretty happy with the results.

First, my first attempt to draw some sort of humanoid-type. Here's a quickie of my worgen hunter Max, with his best friend, Jax the mastiff-



Jax actually turned out looking more like a boxer than a mastiff, but I'm not sure what to do to 'fix' it. Oh well, practice should make it better.

And now a random horse that I drew while trying to come up with another Jahira/Windstar picture. They were not cooperating, so this just popped into my head as a replacement. Or something.



Considering how long it's been since my last horse sketch, I'm kind of impressed with myself.

I've been bouncing between games a lot lately, depending on my mood and whether my brother (who just moved to the other side of the country for the next year or so) is online to pester. Which means I haven't really done much of anything interesting. I did manage to get Kel that fugly pink bird-mount from Love Is In The Air. She still didn't get her achievement/title, though. She still needs the rose bouquet and to throw rose petals on a couple race/classes. Hopefully I'll get it next year.

And the last bit of news- my sister and I have adopted a new kitty. She's one of several cats that have been hanging around the store where we both work. After two of the other kitties got hit by reckless idiot drivers, a couple of the stockers and a manager found homes for a couple of the others. Socks came home with us. Buster wasn't too sure about it at first, but they're getting used to each other, and now he keeps trying to get her to play tag with him. They're adorable.



/Waves :)

Storytime- Grizzly Spirit

Max tossed another crumb of bread to the black-and-white creature sitting hopefully at his feet. He had been coming down from Amberpine Lodge to eat his midday meal on the slope by the river for a few days now, and the little skunk had appeared and started begging for scraps on the second day. Normally, Max wouldn't feed a wild animal, but this guy seemed harmless enough, and other than his begging, acted like any of the other skunks living in the woods nearby. Max took another bite of his sandwich, and tore off another bit of crust for his little friend. However, when he tossed it to the skunk, it didn't move. Max looked more closely at the critter, and raised an eyebrow in surprise at it's shocked expression. Before he could react any further, suddenly something gently nudged his knee.

Max turned his head slowly, and his expression matched the skunk's rather closely, as he looked straight into the eyes of a large, pale, blue-white bear. They stared at each other for several long seconds, then the bear lowered it's head to nudge Max again, this time on his elbow. Max realized it was staring at his sandwich, and slowly his surprise faded into amusement. He tore the remainder of his lunch in half, and held out a piece on the palm of his hand, ready to jerk it back if the bear was too greedy. However, instead of snapping the food up like most wild animals would, it snuffled at his hand briefly, before gently taking the sandwich in his shiny white teeth. It then dropped the offering, letting it fall apart on the ground, and proceeded to neatly pick up each part, first the bread, then the meat. It then turned back to Max and licked his palm, as if in thanks.

The bear settled down next to Max as he finished the rest of his lunch, eating more out of habit than hunger after the unexpected meeting stole his appetite. He noted, almost absently, that he could almost make out some of the grass and twigs that the bear was lying on, and he realized that it must be some sort of spirit. He couldn't quite decide what to make of that, except that it most likely explained the bear's intelligence and good manners. Tentatively, he reached over and touched the bear's back. Surprisingly, it felt very solid, with thick, rather soft fur covering a respectable layer of hard muscle. The beast made a soft rumbling sound, deep in it's chest. It sounded approving, so Max spent a few minutes on a good back-scratching. It wasn't quite as effective as it was in his worgen form, but he didn't want to break the peaceful spell by shapeshifting. Besides, the bear seemed appreciative enough.

Finally, Max gave a final scratch behind the bear's ears and stood. He had already taken twice as long as he usually did, and the hunters in the Lodge had given him a task to do, and he couldn't put it off any longer. The spirit-bear scrambled to it's feet right after him, and began following him up the hill towards the Lodge. Max paused, then turned around.

"A'right, just what d'ye think ye're doin'?" he asked, eyeing the big ghostly animal. And got his second shock of the afternoon, as he heard a faint but distinct voice in his head. "Friend. Follow." Max stared at it (Not it, him), then shook his head. "But... Wait, does that mean...?" he stammered, confused. The bear simply waited, looking at him patiently, but with obvious determination. Max finally snapped his mouth shut, and rubbed his hands over his face. "Well," he said finally, "If ye're gonna be talkin' in m'head, guess I should know better'n t' argue with ye." The bear nodded, his expression brightening, and he shuffled closer to gently bump his head on Max's chest. "We go. Together." Max gave a helpless chuckle as he nodded back, and together they continued back up the slope.

After a few steps, however, Max paused again, as something small bumped against his boot. He looked down at the little skunk, who stared back up at him hopefully. "Wait a sec... Ye too? Aw no. Ain't happenin." The skunk just continued looking up at him, and finally Max sighed in defeat. "Ye gotta be kiddin' me..." With his two new friends in tow, Max headed up to the Lodge, to get directions to the outpost where his next job would take him.




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So, after about a week of camping, Max has his first spirit beast. And yes, I am now working on his non-combat-pet achievement, so he can get a Stinker. It is totally the fault of that darn mountain skunk that kept him company the whole time he was camping. My 'cute-resistance' didn't have a chance... :P