Elkagorasa the Casual

The War Within has been a wonderful expansion for casual, solo play. Each patch has added a new way to engage in the game. Each of these modes provides end-game play that has its own transmog items, gear, mounts and pets. If you want, these can all be run with a group, but Blizzard has figured it out and made them scale up when you group up.  Dastardly Duos This is a new limited-time game mode where you and up to 4 more people fight in an arena-style battle dome. The concept that your team has been pitted by goblin promoters against animatronic knock-offs of legacy raid encounters. During the fight, your team encounters waves of trash, followed by bosses from legacy raids. Randomly, gears will drop off, which can be used as a power-up that can change the fight dynamics. There is a key that allows you to control a vehicle and use its weapons. There's a time extender to prolong the fight. Last, there's a call for reinforcements that brings in more trash mobs. There's a score ...

Dia's Nightmarish Leggings . Nov em ber has been a fun month for me. Let me start off this post with this. These peculiar stretch pants are available in both male and female sizes, horde and alliance. Yes, it looks like you have two skeletal gnomes in your pants, trying to climb out, or maybe they're simply groping your legs and got stuck in the bandages. This has to be extremely uncomfortable for your toon to wear, especially while sitting down. That permanent scowl on my orc's face? Yeah, now you know why.. Where you ask? Well, Elkagorasa was invited to a Normal HFC raid. This group raids regularly Sunday nights (local time) at a reasonable hour! You know that ideal 8PM - Midnight PST. See my oldest daughter plays rec. soccer. Her team had a scrimmage the other night with a similar aged boys team. One of the boys on the opposing team happened to be a boy she went to school with back in Kindergarten (9y ago). His dad still plays WoW. Overall, that first HFC...

Since the drop of 6.2.2, I've been actively clearing my garrison mission table. I've been doing this with hopes that I would see the rare gronnling garrison mission appear . This when completed, drops a coalfist gronnling mount! Unfortunately, it has never dropped for me.. Looking at WoWhead, I see I probably don't meet all of the prerequisites. According to one commenter , for the quest to appear I need: 3x followers with 675 item level 7x followers with 645 item level 675 item level on character (no need to equip the gear, you can just have it in your inventory) I know I don't have 3 followers at (least) 675. I am still getting the quests dropping 645 gear tokens, I didn't think there was a point in upgrading them further than that. I've only reached 678 myself this week with the upgrade of my alchemy trinket to 5:6 (i.e. the  Stone of Wilds ). Instead I've been doing the fair-is-fair upgrade path, were my lowest geared followers were gettin...

I logged off last night with only 1700 rep needed to reached revered with the Order of the Awakened. Any other week and this would have frustrated me, knowing I would need to run the gauntlet 2 more times to get my pathfinder achievement. Happily this week is Darkmoon Faire and I was more than happy to port from my Tanaan office back to Ashran, then port to Thunder Bluff to get the Whee! buff. Yeah, they allow it on the carousel! I totally took advantage of Grumpy's Ultimate Unforseen Circumstance 's tip. Leave it on the body. Yep, that's it. Don't auto-loot the fel-corrupted apexis crystals, leave them on the dead-body.  This was great, for the simple fact that one day, I got on, already having 5 crystals. I didn't auto look, so I got 5 more. Then managed to get into a group, and completed my quest. The next day, I killed the 3 mini-boss challenges and got 6 more, leaving only 4 to get. Use 3, leaving 2 remaining for the one more day.. Overall, what do...

Over the weekend, I only had a couple hours to play. Mostly the kids are adjusting to summer vacation hours, so they're not getting in bed until rather late at night. This left me only about 2-3 hours a few days to play. :-| I worked on my Draenor Pathfinder achievement prerequisites. Securing Draenor : As of Friday, I had 3 remaining bonus objectives to complete. I grabbed the the scouting missions from my QM and queued them all up. The hardest, IMHO, was Shattrath Harbor . This zone had a number of 101-102 elites that would dismount me when trying to run out of there. I wanted to run as I was also working on my Explore Talador and  treasures collection (64:100).  Draenor Loremaster : I made no progress with the  Arak storyline. ATM, I have only completed 3 of the storylines. I feel that when I complete these quests, the exploration will fall into place.  Reputation : I realized that I hadn't opened up tier-3 on my trading post . This tier increases you...

After the compromise last week on no-flying ever again, I decided it was ok to restart the rep grinds for mounts. Flying out to Netherwing ledge reminded me of the Sha'tari Skyguard  and their mountable rays. I remember hating working on this rep at level and had only made it to Friendly. Over the weekend, I read through the guide " Nether Ray in a Day ". This guide details all of the quests that are available for this faction. One commenter pointed out that you can technically you only need to do the repeatable quests (if you don't care about other faction reps). So I flew up and started the grind. Some hints if you're just starting. Kill everything in the zone. Everything gives rep. (Ok, I don't know about the lizards, but they probably do too). I fly into a hub, and start spamming rain of fire over everything. The mobs give 10 rep, their little pets give 5, those fast orange birds give 10 rep and even the treants give 30 rep.  The skettis have a hi...

1) First epic flying mount 2) 50 mounts achievement 3) Long Strange Trip achievement I totally understand your logic.  In Warlords of Draenor, you've spent countless hours developing rewards and quests around never flying. Treasures hidden throughout the Nagrand that are only reachable via flight. Bosses hidden deep into level 100 zones that drop mounts, toys and epic gear. Having the option to helicopter into a zone , drop on the destination, then airlift out immediately bypassing all that design , glory and, well, basically all that work you've done. But what about all the work I've done? I get the feeling you're planning to throw, my 20 flying mounts , all in the trash . Windrider is simply a cat mount with wings . Drake? Yeah, funky dinosaur . Red Flying Cloud is now a low hovering fog bank. That $25 sparkle pony I bought from the Blizzard store? Dumb wing-clipped pegasus! Check out my $25 dumb wing-clipped pegasus mount This got me thinking.....

Today, while trying to finish the Kalimador Tamer achievement, I ran through Sithilus. Hey, while I am here, AQ, maybe I'll get one of the insect tank mounts. Yeah! First trash, I get the mounts! Blue, green and yellow!! Woohoo! So I log out and hop to my warlock to grab my screenshot and then I saw the flavor text. This (relatively) domesticated silithid is at home only in the desert sands of Ahn'Qiraj.

Sunday, I had a few minutes, so I completed a speed run of Zul'Aman. During this speed run, I did successfully get the Bear-ly Made It achievement. Sadly, I didn't realized I needed to loot the bear. I thought (like this commenter) it would come in the mail, or immediately drop into my mounts (like ICC Raider achievement). The mount is in  Kasha's Bag , which drops from Halazzi’s prisoner. The bag is in a corner of the room, and is not immediately obvious. You have to loot the bag. I thought maybe the mount would come in the mail, or become automatically known. Not so. Loot the bag. Thinking about it now, MAYBE it's in my bags.. Geesh, hate when I think of this at work. On the otherhand, my druid may need to run this dungeon soon.. Soloing this dungeons is effortless at 100. I ran straight to each of the bosses and was able to engage them. Sure I aggro'd mobs along the way, but I could AOE them down. Now, they are all level 85, so those 15 levels meant they di...

Highmaul Both Elkagorasa and Esha have gone through Highmaul as DPS a couple times now. Esha is at that point where it's probably time to watch a 'tanking' Highmaul LFR. Vol'gar - tank everything. Kargath Tank swap on impale If in stands from chain hurl, (on heroic), face 'crowd away from raiders. Elkagorasa  had the two-handed staff  drop this week of Mar'gok , so he's now checking the 'LFG' tab and to throw his hat in for a normal raid DPS slot. Mount Hunting Last Friday, I ran once through ICC and got 9 (out of 12) boss achievements done without any issue. There was never any issue with any of the bosses (troll racial healing + very low dps from level 72 bosses). In fact to get the remaining achievements, I think I am going to have to walk away from the keyboard and do nothing for awhile. Full House  requires you to have 5 different mobs alive when you kill the boss. I waited around until I had around 7 adds in my fight. ...

Why can't I favorite my Warlock mounts? I can favorite my tailoring mount. I can favorite my horde scorpion mount. I can favorite just about every other mount in my stable.. but not my FAVORITE MOUNT!

As I've stated before, I have guildies who are running legacy content for achievements, titles and mounts. Last August, I helped a guildie get her Sarth+3 drake mount. 2 days ago, she called in guild for a healer! *PLEASE* and I tried to bring in my disc priest. Sadly, she's never ran ICC 25-man, so she couldn't get into the raid for 25-heroic. Doing some research, I found that it's absolutely soloable. Sure Disc has really low DPS, but it is  possible to complete. Here's the first few bosses done by a level 90 shadow/disc priest. Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 This got me thinking... why my priest? That drake boss... Ok, so how do I heal the boss to full health in order to move on. Warlocks have 0 healing abilities, maybe I could pack along a big bag of bandages and 'heal' it up that way..  I could call in a healer, like Taur did.. On the other hand, my druid can heal and dps like a champ. Heck, maybe even heal enough in feral spec!? While I am at it...

So co-worker/guildies have started looking getting a group together for collecting some of the mounts that appear all over Draenor . Pathrunner , Silthide , Nakk , Luk'hok , Gorok , Nok-Karosh , Poundfist Being horde, we all plan next time we meet to go for  Garn Nighthowl  from Nok-Karosh  (aka an Alliance mountable wolf), but what I really want is the gronnling from Poundfist . Poundfist is a bit more difficult because he's on a bit of a 'random' timer. According to comments on WowHead, he can spawn anywhere from 30-90 hours after server reboots. In the comments, they link to a document posted on Google Docs  that breaks down last spawn.  Of course, the doc is only as good, as people reporting it. No one on Malfurion/Trollbane appear to be reporting.. Hmm, I see a great use of the 6.1 selfie camera! Not long after that, a link was shared on twitter to a link to a mount planner . This nifty website provides a 'plan' for getting all the legacy mo...

Last night I saw my first Holiday mount! The Swift Brewfest Ram dropped for my priest. Maybe, just maybe this is the year I get all the holiday mounts! Next Horseman's! I am a little disappointed that Brewfest is still dropping 470 items . It would be awesome if instead, 496-510 level items dropped. It does appear that next that will happen.. @Muffinus @gamedale @sporebat @TheCrafticus In 6.0 we can balance power items from holidays to be appropriate without a patch. Wish granted! — Owen Landgren (@olandgren) September 21, 2014

Maximum Molten Core One of WoW’s classic 40-player dungeons, Molten Core, will be available in Raid Finder during the anniversary period for level 100 players. Making it through the underground gauntlet and defeating Ragnaros will reward players with a Core Hound mount and a Warlords of Draenor Raid Finder–quality helm (100% guaranteed!). For a walkthrough of the dungeon as it stands today, check out our  Revisiting Heroism’s Past – Molten Core  guide. I hadn't really thought about it before, but I may not be able to even do this. This will require me to reach 100; 10 levels between release 11/13 and before the end of the anniversary party on 1/6/2015. 54 days. The last week, I've only been able to log about 45 minutes leveling up my druid. I am not sure I'll be able to level up my warlock in 7 weeeks!! I'll work on it as a core-hound mount sounds CRAZY! 

Co-worker and I were talking today about all the 168 mounts she has. While looking at the list, I asked about her Red Flying Cloud mount. "Oh, that was easy, we got it in about an hour."  Really? "Yeah, you just fly around and open those notes.." Oh my! Exalted with the Lorewalkers in about an hour! I am doing it. So, tonight, I first checked Curse for an addon that could help. A quick search of Lorewalker rep and I found " Lorewalkers ". This awesome little app, combined with TomTom for the arrow, provided a direct route to each of my missed readings. When I got close, it would popup a little picture of the drop spot.  (highlight added for emphasis) I had only 2 issues with the addon. 1) It seemed to have issues with registering some of the statues ('view read plaque'). I had to dismiss the waypoint to get TomTom to move on. 2) Once or twice, I reloaded all my status (click 'reload' button) in order to find my next point of in...

Now on the Blizzard store! I think for the $5 (more) donation to Make-A-Wish (heck they helped BatKid) , I'll probably just get the combo of both this mount and the new pet .

With a new expansion on the horizon, there are a few things that Blizzard  you could really do to expand the game. I feel that there is an entire segment of untapped players out there that would love to have awesome mounts and get to PLAY with them. Sure, the quests to raise, then race the dragon look cool, but how about we make them more detailed, then provide on-going play. For example, I feel that riding a velociraptor should be more organic. When turning corners, I'd expect the animal to lean into the corners and really rip up the ground. Instead, Stinky just sort of strolls. What I want to ride would look more like this: Next, the motorcycles (mechano hog, goblin trike). Here are goblins, reckless and a wee-bit crazy. If you wanted to host an all night rave and didn't care if the place was destroyed when you left, you'd have goblins host it. I'd love to see our bikes, actually be able to drift. I think it would be awesome, if we could take our...

Last night after completing my random dungeon, I hit exalted with Sunreaver Onslaught. I didn't think much of it at the time. Today I checked their loot table and saw a few ho-hum things for upgrades, but was really stoked when I saw their mount! Now my troll velociraptor mount has a dino-buddy!

Last night around 1AM local time, I finally reached level 90 on my warlock. Now for the painful leveling process of bringing my priest up to max. When I started last night, Elk was about 4 bubbles away. Bringing up an add-on mentioned on Twisted Nether  ( HandyNotes+HallowsEnd) edition, I quickly found each of the buckets in the 4 zones I'd played in and simply picked up candy!! (Note HandyNotes is and old-addon and you need to edit the TOC file in order to use it, see the comments on curse). It's a really nice way to level when all you need to do is find the next flight path between quest hubs! Only once did I have to run to the next area, simply because I hadn't grabbed the flight path when there previously. [MACRO - Put shortcut on your bar and click it instead of opening your bags each stop.] /use Handful of Treats What 90 means... FLYING ! Yep, my first thing once hitting 90 is to find the flight trainer and plop down the 2500g to get flying. Heroic Dung...