Friday Fun Night – Twilight Harbingers

Lyss, Arv and Van on Twilight Harbinger Drakes

After having a week off from doing our Friday Fun Nights, we finally finished the Glory of the Dragon Soul Raider meta and got our drakes last Friday.  Grats to everyone that got them!  The mount looks awesome and the model looks like Alexstraza’s dragon form.

All that was left was to complete Madness of Deathwing, starting on Kalecgos’ platform.  We had most of our FFN regulars (me, Lyss, Slice, Stunnah, Van, Bocat, Vaunt and Luxy) and brought in Zug’s sis, Galanna too.  It was a quick run and it only took us an hour to do.

Vaunt and Bocat still need a Madness kill on Ysera’s platform for their drakes and Stunnah is halfway done with the daggers, so we’ll probably be doing DS for a few more weeks.  Thanks to everyone for coming to these DS runs and helping out get these awesome mounts!

Turtle Power

No, we didn’t get Tortos down this week, but we did progress and got him down to 29% on our best attempt Wednesday night.  Hopefully he’ll go down next week.

So what’s this post about?  Well, I just couldn’t let Van have all the mount BMAH glory to herself this week… =P

It’s been a long time since I’ve won anything off the BMAH, mainly because there hasn’t been anything on there worth buying or there were auctions that I lost at the last minute.  I missed out on two X-51 Nether-Rockets, one to Sorak and another because I was so focused on leveling up my mage that I forgot to check up on the auction before it ended, lol.  I did buy a special “weapon” that I’ve been meaning to post, but the screenshots for it have been buried in my folder, so I’ll have to fish for them and post about it later.

What I did win was this guy Tuesday night, a Riding Turtle!

The Riding Turtle is the first mount ever offered by the WoW TCG.  It comes from the rare loot card, Saltwater Snapjaw, from the first set of the TCG, Heroes of Azeroth.  It is one of three loot cards from the set, with the Hippogryph Hatchling pet and the Tabard of the Flame being the other two.

This mount was one I coveted the most when I first started playing WoW, only because it was the only turtle mount available in the game at the time.  The turtle mount didn’t increase your speed on land (it was the same as walking on foot), but got a speed boost when used in the water.  And the space bar or /mountspecial emote is hilarious with its hide-in-the-shell animation and special sound effects.

I tried to get the loot card as I started building my WoW TCG collection and even bought several cheap booster boxes for a chance at one, just never got lucky.  I did end up getting the Hippogryph pet and the Tabard of the Flame, which just sits in my bank, waiting for Blizz to implement a Tabard Storage or Tabard Tab (please?).

In Wrath, I got another chance at a turtle mount when the Sea Turtle, a blue version of the Riding Turtle, was introduced.  I managed to snag mine from a pool when doing some of the Ka’luk fishing dailies in Northrend.  I’ve had good times with my Sea Turtle, especially charging at super slow speed into boss fights like Baleroc and Morchok, lol.

More sea mounts made their way into the game, like the seahorse mounts and the Reins of Poseidus from Vashj’ir in Cataclysm and finally in Mists, pandas got their own sea turtles with their racial mounts, the Dragon Turtles.  Water Striders gave us a new dimension to sea mounts by allowing us to ride them across the water, previously only done by Warlocks and their Felsteeds with help from a glyph, Death Knights with Path of Frost on or anyone under the Water Walking effect given by Shamans.

If only Blizz gave us the ability to fish off these mounts without being dismounted….that would totally make these mounts even more awesome. =)

Mini Horridon

What a difference a nerf makes….

Last week, we managed our first Horridon kill in many, many attempts and then the following day, they nerfed the fight. >< Yesterday was the first night we got to experience the changes made and boy did it make a difference.  The health pool of the adds are what got the nerf bat, making it easier to clean them up before moving on to the next gate.  Even the dinomancers felt feeble; as soon as they would jump into the arena, our dps would burst them down so quick that their orbs immediately dropped and Horridon was soon breaking down another gate.  I had a little trouble getting my Puncture stacks off at the end when Horridon enraged and had to die and get brezzed to reset them, but otherwise it was a one shot for us.

So I went to check out the loot from Horridon’s corpse and noticed there were three items instead of the normal two in the loot window.  Lo and behold, there was the mount, the Spawn of Horridon!  We all rolled for it and I came out on top rolling an epic 98.  Woot!

This Direhorn mount shares the same  color and stripes as Big Poppa (Momma?) Horridon, just missing the giant bazookas or lifeboats or floaties or battering rams or whatever those things are on the sides.

I guess this was a nice (sur)prize for a fight that gave us so much trouble for so many weeks.  Thanks Horridon for giving me your baby!

Friday Fun Night – Shadow Wolves Raids T11 and T12

Lyss and I had a discussion a couple of weeks ago about organizing a fun guild night where we would do things like raid old content or farming dino bones on the Isle of Giants, all while chatting it up and laughing on vent.  We wanted to do this to bring in more guild interaction on our off raid nights and to also break up the monotony of wiping on progression bosses, week in and week out *cough*Horridon*cough*.  The last time SR did a fun night like this was back in January, where we raided T11 and in one night, killed Heroic Cho’gall, Heroic Al’Akir, Heroic Nefarian and even Sinestra.

Our first fun raid night was scheduled two Fridays ago, with the intentions of finishing up the T11 achievees for the Glory of the Cataclysm Raider.  We had 9 SR peeps sign up for the event (me, Van, Bocat, Slice, Lyss, Shirl, Zari, Adoe and Shadeey), and so I asked Navi earlier in the day if she wanted to come.  She said she was still missing a lot of the T11 achievees, so it was a definite yes for her.  Adoe and Shadeey weren’t able to make it to the raid that night, so Navi brought in Lushnek and Exray from her guild to fill out the remaining spots.

We started the night with Bastion of Twilight and left it on Heroic the whole way through.  Halfus ran over me like a truck and I died once, but came back quick to finish the fight.  I honestly think we ended the fight not releasing any of the drakes…maybe that could have helped out a little, lol.

Two of the few achievements I had left for the meta came on the next fight, the twin dragons Valiona and Theralion.  We barely got the Double Dragon achievement as we killed the last Twilight Fiend just in time before the Twilight Realm team died.

The Ascendant Council was next;  I remember reading about how this was the hardest Heroic encounter back in Cataclysm.  They didn’t stand a chance to our army of 90s.

We tried to get The Abyss Will Gaze Back Into You on the Cho’gall fight, but with the additional adds and all the bad going out to deal with, we couldn’t keep the corruption levels low enough.  So we avoided that achievement and just killed him for those who needed the Heroic kill.

A few people hadn’t seen the Sinestra fight before, so after explaining a little bit of the fight and handing out assignments, we managed to one-shot her, getting some people their Dragonslayer titles.

Next up was Blackwing Descent.  Again, we did the whole raid on Heroic and it went pretty smoothly, except for a couple of hiccups on Heroic Nefarian.  We did have another close achievee call by just getting Nef to 50% before he landed in Phase 3 to get Keeping it in the Family.

Oh, and I finally got the best temporary title in the game during the Heroic Maloriak encounter.  I managed to stay alive this time around, helping those that needed the Aberrant Behavior achievement and not getting blown up by the adds and bad.  Looking at this title makes me feel like I just killed some of Gru’s unfortunate friends from Despicable Me, lol.

We ended the night working on the Stay Chill achievement in Throne of the Four Winds, but it was getting late and we had trouble getting our stacks up, so we left it for the next fun raid night.

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So last Friday, we headed back to T11 land.  Our raid comp was a little different from the prior week, with Chewy coming in on his Drak shammy, Smutt, in place of Shirl.  Navi said that Exray wouldn’t be able to make it, and so we brought in another fellow Frostee, Luxygaga.  We started in BoT again, this time doing everything on Normal, even Cho’gall, to make the run quicker and the achievement easier to get.

We then went to BWD to get the last part of Achieve-a-tron for Van and killed Atramedes for some transmog gear for Navi.

Then it was off to Tot4W again to finish up the meta.  We tried different strats to get everyone the correct amount of Wind Chill stacks and after a few attempts, the achievement was finally ours.

And with that, my meta was complete.

The reward for completing this meta is another directional Wind drake mount, the Reins of the Drake of the East Wind, which is a really nice-looking red drake.

We finished Tot4W by killing Al’Akir on Heroic for those who needed the “of the Four Winds” title.

Since we finished T11 so quick, Lyss suggested that we go to T12 for a quick Firelands run to get the “Firelord” title.  I had gotten my title in an OpenRaid run last year and I remembered how crazy and hectic that fight was, especially to see a Leggy Rags running around, so I was eager to hear what the rest of the group thought about it when we got to him.  Luxy mentioned before we got to Firelands that she solo’d Alysrazor earlier in the week farming for the mount and that we wouldn’t be able to see the Firebird, but we decided to go through with it anyways.  One by one, each Heroic boss fell; Shannox, Beth’tilac, Rhyolith, Baleroc and Staghelm.

I did want to test out something with the Baleroc fight.  With such high health pools in MoP, I wanted to see how high I could stack my health on the gatekeeper.  I was already at 700K HP before the fight started and hoped to hit 2 million HP by the end, but I didn’t quite reach it.  I got pretty damn close to it, though, Like a (Mini-Raid) Boss!

In order to see Heroic Rags, you have to kill every other boss on Heroic, so when we got to his Lair, of course Rags was nowhere to be found.  So we flipped the raid to Normal and just burned him down quick, no pun intended.  We even had Seeds, Sons of Flame and Scions all at the same time as we transitioned into phase 3. =P

It was nice to blast those achievements out of the way and I had a good time hanging out with everyone.  We’re planning to do Dragon Soul achievements this Friday and maybe we can also get some Firelord titles too.  Thanks again to the Frostees for joining us for the runs and grats to everyone on their achievements!

A Dino for the Hammer

Last night, I finally hit exalted with the Sunreaver Onslaught, the Horde faction that is stationed on the Isle of Thunder.  I managed this even though our server is only on stage 2 of opening up the Isle (we were at 97% completion before I logged for the night, so we should have the next area open today).

Gaining reputations with most of the new factions has never been easier.  Combine the Grand Commendation that you can purchase at revered with the daily bonus reputation from running a random Heroic dungeon and the path to exalted is a breeze.  I’m not sure if Sunsong Ranch offers work orders for the Sunreavers, but if they do, it’ll make the grind that much easier.

If only the Shado-Pan Assault was this easy, lol.

When you reach exalted with the Sunreavers, Lor’themar gives you a special quest to retrieve the remains of one of the bosses in the Throne of Thunder, the Dark Animus.

Your reward for completing this task is a Sunreaver Standard, but I’m more excited at the chance of the Dark Animus dropping the Son of Animus pet.  Because, you know, it doesn’t take up any precious bag space, lol.

The Dark Animus is the ninth boss of the Throne of Thunder raid, so I won’t be seeing him on Normal mode for a while, since Horridon has been stomping our asses of late.  But the LFR for Animus should be available next week, so I could complete it then.

As with most factions, there are rewards available for purchase.  The Sunreavers don’t really offer anything exciting; there are some ilvl 496 belts, rings and neck pieces that can be purchased with valor if you’ve been unlucky at getting these to drop in HoF or TotES and a tabard.  But for mount collectors out there, you can purchase the Reins of the Crimson Primal Direhorn at exalted.  After the faction/guild discount, the mount comes out to only 2,100 gold.

I haven’t been mount farming for the other Direhorns that drop from the elites across Pandaria yet, but this is awesome first one to have.

A Crimson Direhorn for a Crimson Hammer?  Perfect. =)

UPDATE:  Thanks to Veluxia for pointing out that once you reach exalted with the Sunreaver Onslaught and purchase the Crimson Primal Direhorn, you automatically get the Alliance version, the Golden Primal Direhorn, on all your Alliance toons.  Here is a pic of Valoree on the Golden dino.