Reflections From The Pond

Posts Tagged ‘events’

On Thursday the 12th of February Ascendo Tuum celebrated its 2nd birthday!

And of course this called for a heavy celebration!

We all gathered up in Ironforge for drinking, dancing and general rejoicing dressed in our fineries.

A piccolo of flaming fire and a toy train made sure that everyone was up dancing and making noises.

And as luuv was in the air, we also had a romantic picnic basket up. Portable gnome, anyone?

We started with a Treasure Hunt, scattering us all over Azeroth to find valuable items like Forked Tongue, a Black Stallion Bridle and Peacebloom.

After the GM’s group had won (conspiracy theory, anyone?) we flew off to Zul’Aman to get our revenge on the Blood Elf leader.

We gathered up cunningly hidden behind a tree outside Silvermoon. Btw, a three-seater is an excellent way of transporting those slacking guildies who are not yet 60 and still ride around on slow-arsed mounts :P

The belfs were totally unprepared and we rode through their city and assaulted their leader without problems.

Haha, up yours! ( Or, if I shall say it in Latin, Ascendo Tuum! ) Belf leader down!

After having destroyed the belfs we took a quick portal to Theramore and a nice relaxing flight to Ratchet.

We rode across the barren wastelands of the Barrens and into the lush green hills of Mulgore.

We can now testify that the lifts at Thunder Bluff can reliably carry 30+ mounted alliance fighters. The problem is getting off the lift …

The taurens must have been alerted and we had lost the element of surprise, resulting in a temporary setback.

Maybe it is not such a good idea to assault Thunder Bluff at prime game time…

So Cairne Bloodhoof lived to see another day, but he better watch out, because we will be back!

All in all, a great fun birthday party! Cheers!

Have you heard? The Ice Stone has melted.

(In case you doubt this, go visit hastheicestonemelted.com)

So what is the Ice Stone? At first, I had no idea, so I had to resolve to the universal method of mystery-solving: when in doubt, google it!

Theory 1

All desks and work areas in the Blizzard company are made of IceStone (c),

a “durable surface made from 100% recycled glass and cement to create a high performance concrete material”.

This has now melted, leaving the Blizz employeses with no place to put their coffee mugs and coke cans, thus resulting in a lack of caffeine and an encroaching panic as the caffeine-withdrawal symptoms start to emerge.

Despite their weakened condition, they have managed to post their distress in-game, hoping against hope that someone will understand their plea for help and figure out how to freeze their desktops solid again so work can resume as intended.

Theory 2

Cryolite, also known as ice stone (name derived from the greek cryo (frost) and lithos (stone) in an allusion to its appearance) is a rare white-ish mineral.

The melting point for Cryolite is approximately 1010°C, which is only slightly above the average room temperature of a small room crammed with teenagers having a WoW LAN party.

By cramming in one more in an already steaming room the melting temperature was achieved, and every one of the participants is now shouting out their joy of having achieved this Achievement in-game.

Theory 3

Lazy programmers reuse code. Also many good theories in the comments.

Theory 4

Not a theory per se, more an insightful article about how the ice stone really permeats (or maybe I shall say melt into) our modern culture.

So, Hallow’s End has ended and we are all a bit more well-endowed in the epix department, some of us has completed the achievements for that Hallowed title, some has a new pet, a funny hat or a hat that laughs. Some lucky bastidds may even ride around on a flaming horse.

But the best thing this Hallow’s End brought imo was the chance to use a pretty fun variety of a classic Mae West line…

You need:
- One dragon, in this case Lethon who was walking around in Duskwood. Lethon used to be a 40-man raid world boss back in the old misty pre-TBC days, but nowadays it can be defeated by:
- One tank, lvl 70, decently geared.
- One healer, lvl 70, also decently geared.
- Lots and lots of time

How to do it:

Let the tank engage the dragon and establish aggro. Positioning is not that hard when there are only 2 people in the raid, so tank it wherever you like.

Healer, stand to the side of the dragon where you have the tank comfortably in range. Don’t go too far back because it might hit you with the tail, and don’t go too far to the front because it might spew Noxious Breath all over you.

Should the healer get caught in the green fumes, it’s not the end of the world, just remember that the debuff increases the cooldown on all your abilities so you will have to be alert and rotate your heal spells until the debuff wears off.

By virtue of standing right in front of the dragon, the tank will get caught in his breath and get the stackable debuff that also increases Nature damage taken. When the tank has the debuff he will need some extra healing. Nature resist gear helps.

Occasionally Lethon fires off a Shadowbolt Volley to one side of him. Easiest is to eat the bolts. Their damage is not worth the bother of turning the dragon around to get the bolts to the opposite side of the healer and is easily healed through with a single Renew.

The dragon also emits a green cloud of sleep gas that crawls slowly across the ground towards a raid member. This cloud sleeps anyone caught in it for 4 seconds. If the healer runs away from it, it will turn and go for the tank. The cloud’s edges are pretty well defined but you actually get the sleep debuff a bit before the cloud reaches you, which makes judging when to run away a little tricky. The tank takes the sleep without losing aggro, and the only time it’s worth running away from the cloud is when the tank has the Noxious Breath debuff, in which case a healer sleeping for 4 seconds may prove fatal.

If the healer’s mana permits (which it should), use any damage spells when possible or wand away as much as you can between heals to help dps the dragon down just a tad bit faster.

At every 25 % interval of his health, Lethon does a special ability – he summons shades, one for each raid member except the tank. These shades are immune to AoE and when they reach Lethon they will heal him a little. Kill these as soon as they spawn. In a 2-man raid you have 1 shade to take care of, which is not hard and even if you don’t kill it, the amount of health 1 shade gives to Lethon is practically negligible.

That’s it basically. Lather, rinse, repeat.

One comment though, unless you are really dead set on 2-manning the dragons, bringing an extra dps along will speed things up greatly. Won’t be as cool though, but if you are after the kill rather than the achievement, by all means do it. By the time Lethon was down to 56 %, I had used my Shadow Fiend 5 times, and since it has a cd of 5 mins, you can easily figure out how long we had been at it. Sadly, I messed up then and got caught in the sleep cloud while the tank was heavily stacked with the Noxious debuff. But we will get him next time!

Have you been doing the Midsummer’s quests?

I am thinking especially of the quests where you desecrate the Horde Midsummer flame or honor the Alliance one (or vice versa ofc :-)

There is a Midsummer’s Fire outside all the alliance or horde settlements in both Azeroth and Outland, and there is a fire inside every capital as well.

Honoring a fire will give you 5 gold 99 silver and 5 Burning Blossoms, while desecrating pays better, 11 gold 99 silver and 10 Blossoms.

If you manage to get to the opposing faction’s capital and desecrate their flame (stealth or a large raid group is highly recommended here unless you want to corpse run a lot), you create an item like Flame of Orgrimmar, that gives you a quest that rewards you with 25 Blossoms and your choice of midsummer food.

The Horde fires are handily marked with a yellow ! and even on a pvp server the midsummer celebrants won’t attack you when you put out their fire. Be careful though, because if you get too close to any guards slouching about they will attack!

There are about 10 horde Midsummer Fires on each continent, and 7 in Outlands, and the same amount of Alliance Fires (not counting the capital city ones since they can be a little tricky to get into for the opposing faction), and by desecrating/honoring these you will net a sweet 485 gold and 405 Blossoms, more than enough to pay for one of the wisps or dancing fiery draeneis (350 Blossoms each)!

But hurry, Midsummer’s Festival will be over on July 5th!

The day was bright and clear on Sporeggar (EU) as the gnomes and dwarves started gathering in Dun Morogh to join in that once-in-a-lifetime-event-Turpster-Dingstravaganza, the killing of the Turpster (lvl 69 undead Priest) by the armies of the Turpies!

Some were more prepared than others…

And looking stylish is no excuse for not gearing up!

 Some were trying to deter us from our goal by a pitiful attempt at annihilating us before we got started…

 But we laughed at them and gathered up outside the cave of the Turpster, forming an orderly line…

Some were taking the opportunity to try and score more than a boss kill though ;P

And even as we waited we had to clear some trash respawns…

… and the gnome ghost train was running back to the cave.

 When the event started we were 175 members in the guild the Turpies, none of us above lvl 6, + an assorted bunch of trial account raiders who could not be invited to the guild. We were easily more than 200 people waiting to assault the Turpster.

Time to go! We ran into the lair of the Turpster!

NOT a good idea to press CTRL-V!

I had my healbot configured to my two healing spells, Lesser Heal (Rank 2) and Lesser Heal (Rank 1).

Under the massive onslaught of the Turpies the Turpster was going down!

After this unique world first kill (SK Gaming eat our shorts! ;P) we all headed to IF to watch the Big T ding 70.

Some confusion arose as to where the actual ding would take place, and sadly I got to the SW tram station only in time to see the newly dinged Turpster hearthstone away :-(

Gratz to the Turpies for downing this imba boss, and gratz Turpster to your 70-ding!

It was a great event, and I would not have missed it for the world!

For more pictures (including one of the actual ding) visit Yet Another Warlock Nerf, or for a video of the event itself check out the Dingstravaganza at YouTube.

This here is Tessytoots, prepping for the Turpster Dingstravaganza on Saturday night. Prepping is easy in this case, all she has to do is ding lvl 6 and be ready for the appearance of the Big T.

I created Tessytoots and logged in on Sporeggar Friday afternoon, and to my delight I found out that there was a beta test coming up!

The Turpster showed up, dressed in rags, and the valiant members of the guild the Turpies immediately set upon him!

We gathered in numbers and the big ugly was soon overwhelmed by our determination and skillful attacks on him!

He was going dooown!

But the cunning one had a few more trick up his sleeve! He summoned an add! And ouch, Holy Nova hurts!

But in the end, the Turpies emerged victoriously!

The Big T showed up for a few more tests, and the main event is to take place tonight, Saturday June 14th, after the LIVE WoW Insider Show (3:30pm EST/8:30pm GMT), at around 4:45pm EST/9:45pm GMT.

When I logged out last night, Tessytoots being lvl 5,5, the Turpies had 70 members, none of them above lvl 6. I have no doubt that the Turpster will go down bigtime tomorrow and it will be a spectacular event!

Be there!