Hallow's End fun

An indulgent photo post...



OMG had his piccolo playing making everyone dance while we waited for the Headless Horseman.



The Headless Horseman arrives!



I'm a Leper Gnome! Look at the crowd in the background waiting to do the quest to put out the fires.



Now I am a Leper Gnome with a pumpkin on my head! Wbang is a bat and OMG is doing something in the background as a skeleton...



Too much pumpkin? NEVER!



Happy Hallow's End from Pirate Ashlean!

Thank you Blizzard! This has been the best event ever I think! Huge participation levels, the costumes, trick or treating, the PvP quest in South Shore and I can't wait to try out the Headless Horseman in SM. More PvP quests would be welcomed I think. I don't play on a PvP server anymore but sometimes I miss world PvP. I don't want to go to a BG and find myself up against well geared BGers. I want some gentle Horde killing from time to time... Had a blast last night!

Guns v Bows

I know I should be thrilled at this quest reward (Mama's Insurance) but this lil hunter ain't happy. You see, I like bows. I really like bows. Really, really, really like them. I like the way they look in my hand, I like the quiver on my back and I love the crossbow look. So, I don't want to use guns, ever!

Actually, as an aussie I don't know guns in real life and I don't really wanna use them in WoW either. Inside my heart there is a little tiny corner that loves to role play and guns just don't fit with how I see Ashlean. My gun skill is 1. I would have to shot Dr. Doom for a LONG TIME to level it. And replace my quiver with an ammo pouch and buy bullets. It all seems like too much work.

Instead I do believe I will do a long and involved quest chain and get a BLUE BOW - Lohn'goron, Bow of the Torn-heart. How hot does that look!?!

In other news we have hit 365 in jewelcrafting and honored with The Consortium. Very excited as we can now make Swift Skyfire Diamond (+24 Attack Power & Run speed increase FTW). It's just a pity we have nothing to put it in to yet.

A glorious day in Burning Steepes

Jailbreak chain photos

What an amazing event! I wish that there were more of these in the game.

Reaching level 70

Here's the screenshot!



The Evergrove Druid is as suprised as everyone else that I managed this feat as evidenced by the exclamation mark above his head...

Having fun in UBRS

Forging my UBRS key (Seal of Ascension) proved to be interesting. With me, a mage and a resto druid we decided to try to kill Emberstrife with my pet tanking. Fine until I tried to control Emberstrife and was told "You already control a summoned creature." Oh. Bit of discussion and we do it with me dismissing my pet at about 20%. Worked a treat and now I have my UBRS key.

As to why I wanted an UBRS key well, that is a long story. In Scholomance there is an interesting room (The Viewing Room) where all the mobs are yellow so you can run through safely however trying to attack the two bosses in the room will bring all the mobs charging towards you. I decided I wanted a Dawn's Gambit so I could turn all the mobs into skeletons which are easily rounded up and finished off with a few AEs. Part of the chain to get it involves freezing eggs in The Rookery in UBRS so we had to get one of the team a UBRS key... which meant a LBRS run to get the gems and seal. Which meant forging the key (refer above).

Finally with key in hand (bag) we headed into UBRS on Saturday night with the team (70 Hunter, 70 Mage, 70 resto druid and 61 feral druid) planning to do the egg quest and be on our way. Realising that we were doing well we decided to do the Father Flame event. It was a close call but we made it through that event so decided to push on. No problems with Rend Blackhand either! Get to the Beast. Great fun fight! All survived!



Skinned like a pro by Matford and out popped Finkle Einhorn.



We moved on to General Drakkisath after a couple of wipes getting there (five mobs at once was a little tricky). Got one of his guards down while one was sleeping but just couldn't get the other guard and Drak down. We WILL do it but will try some other techniques including kiting Drak into another room. Still very chuffed at downing The Beast and having a crack at Drak. Yay Team!

Discovering the daily quests

Finally I have gotten around to checking out the daily quests and I like! Wbang picked herself up a gryphon (black of course!) so she could do the bombing quests. Lucky for her she got her flying skill free with druid flight form so only had to cough up 100G. After killing 20 ogres we were sent to Skettis to bomb some eggs. How easy is that!!! Will be adding this to my list of things to do each day. Always happy to make 12G without breaking a fingernail.

Pawing through Lootables I realised that maxing my jewelcrafting wasn't going to be as painful as I thought. I've got enough mats to get to 357 waiting for me and hopefully I can pick up some more Talasites over the weekend to get me to the stage I can make meta gems. Lucky for me Wbang is an alchemist so she can make the diamonds for me to cut to 375 so no reason I can't have this skill maxed in a couple of weeks.

Of course in that time I need to keep working on reputation so I can get the recipes I need...

Strat run tonight I hope. I have three quests I want to clear out of my log. So many quests, so little time!

Patch 2.3

Wow! The patch notes for 2.3 are out today and over at the official boards the Hunters are going mad! Seems to be mostly those who play in the arena so I'm not about to start giving my stuff away just yet.

Some of my favourite changes are:

• Introduction of Guild Banks
• Reduction in the amount of experience required to level to 60 (can't wait to play my shaman again)
• A new flight path has been added to the Rebel Camp in northern Stranglethorn Vale
• Increased vendor discounts
• Pets will try to get behind their targets when engaging in melee combat
• You can now control-click on a recipe to see how the item that is made by that recipe will look on you in the dressing room
• Daily cooking quests are now available from The Rokk in Shattrath City! In addition to gold, you can receive random cooking reagents and new recipes as a reward for completing these quests
• Fishermen and women can now track fishing nodes. This ability is learned from a journal sometimes found in crates obtained through fishing
• Level 1-60 dungeon quests have had their experience and faction rewards increased
• Lowered the fireball damage of Defias Pillagers
• Increased the cooldowns on the heals of Kurzen Medicine Men
• Corpses that belong to someone in your party, but that you cannot loot will say in the corpse mouseover who has loot rights on that corpse. This will help skinners who want to know who to talk to in order to skin their corpse

Some of these are very whimsical likes but overall I am happy. Can't wait to level my shaman again and try out some of the revamped instances.

Where has the time gone?

Personally I have been sick for ten days. Today I feel human! That still is no excuse for no posts in nearly a month. Bad hunter! What exciting things have been happening?!?

I managed to hit level 70 helped along by a week at home sick. Could have done without being sick but was sure happy to hit 70! Then I realised how much more there was to do in the game...

Last night was an exciting first with our small team of four doing our first Outlands run together. My husband, Matford, is levelling a feral druid up to tank for us and we tested him out well in Ramparts. He's just hit 60 (WOOT!) and did a marvellous job tanking and keeping agro and as a reward he replaced his bracers, gloves, belt, ring, got a healing necklace and new boots as a quest reward! That's some instance run and is part of the joy of running with three 70's who don't need that gear.

I had in mind that if the Scale Leggings of the Skirmisher dropped from the first boss I would be very happy as even at 70 they are an upgrade. First run a cloth piece dropped so we decided to just clear to the first boss and see what he dropped. YAY, I got lucky and the pretty blue legs dropped. As I have the "matching" chest piece I am very happy with the overall look. I *am* a chick.

Levelled jewelcrafting to 345 and now need tonnes of Adamantite to make the leap to the next level. Reached Honored with CE and bought my key and sexy Warden's Arrows. Soloed my way to getting the Coif of the Wicked.

As a group we have been doing some of the old content, Stratholme, Scholomance, BRD, LBRS. Great fun instances and I do like feeling uber! Got myself attuned for Molten Core, hit revered with Argent Dawn and got Naxx attuned, got my BRD key, got my Scholo key and got the pieces to make my UBRS key. We did LBRS with 3 70's and a 60 which was a really good feeling. We did the Jailbreak quest chain including the extremely cool slow walk through Stormwind to confront Lady Prestor so we are nearly attuned for Onyxia as well.

I now have a pretty snowy gryphon to fly around Outlands on. I can't believe how cool it is to *FLY*. I just love it. Wbang got herself an elegant Talbuk from the Kurenai after killing 3,012,486 ogres, handing in numerous beads (I wonder what they do with all the beads!?!) and reaching Exalted. Great job!



Next step is to get Matford to 70 and do all the instances along the way!

Saturday night silliness...

How many plant parts do you need lady?!?

A good night was had by all! Cenarion Expedition rep is 2/3 of the way through Friendly and I should be able to start questing for them on the weekend. I have finally discovered the reason for me to get rep with these guys! Originally I was just thinking that it's best to work on getting to Exalted in the easiest way possible so I don't mess things up for later but then I discovered the Scout's Arrow being sold by the Quartermaster so I have stocked up ready to replace the Wicked Arrows I have been using and then there are the pretty Warden's Arrow waiting for me when I get to 68 and Revered with Cenarion Expedition. DPS is my friend.

Found a group for Hellfire Ramparts as I somehow missed getting the hand last time through. Two hunters, a mage and a balance druid made for a strange group. We managed to make our way through with Stalk doing most of the tanking to the first boss without too much pain but once we wiped on him I realised that the group wasn't going to be able to kill him. Time to call in my trusty druid! Even with Wbang it was tough but that was more due to the balance druid struggling to keep agro (with good reason), the mage using pyro blasts far too often and one particularly bad pull. However, much to my amazement we finished the instance and I now have a lovely shiny pair of Handguards of Precision.

Checking my gear reminded me of a serious boot deficiency. Time to ditch my level 40 mail boots (ouch!) for Wrathfin Greaves of the Bandit (level 61 and sexyyy). I have now replaced all my gear with something approaching reasonable. Next stop is to go through The Armory and work out which quests I want to do next so I can replace it all over again!

Time to get back to some killing (that gives experience)

It's all very well to help my leatherworking husband get turtle scales and flex my uber leet hunter skills on mobs twenty levels lower than me but it might be time to see the experience bar move again! Tonight I am off to Zangarmarsh to hand in some Unidentified plant parts then work on my Cenarion Expedition reputation. I am following the advice of others more knowledgable than I to get my reputation to Honored before doing the quests. I was blown away by how pretty Zangarmarsh was the first I visited it. I just hope I enjoy killing the wildlife!

Last night wasn't a complete waste. I visited all my alts and gathered as many mats as I had to work on my jewel crafting. Got it to 214 and now I will keep working on it gradually. I know people complain about levelling professions but jewel crafting is by far the most punishing I have done and I know it will only get worse.

I am still trying to work out the server economy on Nagrand. It's out of control at times. It just doesn't seem realistic to think I can sell a stack of mithril bars for 9G but I did. Don't make the mistake of thinking I am complaining but having come from a server where the economy was pretty poor it's nice to see the cash rolling in. There are so many items on the AH that doing an Auctioneer scan takes over 15 minutes!

Mining 300 FINALLY

A lap around Un'goro finally saw me hit 300 in mining with a screenshot to celebrate of course.



Next stop was of course Honor Hold to hand over my 10G to a lazy dwarf who will now let me mine the precious Fel Iron in Outlands. About time! The Thorium went straight to my Engineer who got her skill to 301 and made my leatherworking husband a happy man by whipping up a Salt Shaker.

Last night I took Wbang's priest alt into SM and got her the orb and dagger so she was a happy Draenei. I have made a mental note to check arrow supply BEFORE heading somewhere as remote as SM. We had to stop after the Armory because I had 1 solitary arrow left! I doubt they would have sold me any arrows in The Undercity.

Congrats to Wbang on getting her lovely +81 healing enchant!

Next thing to work on is getting my Jewel Crafting up from a paltry 190. Ugh.

What a difference 70's make

Saw a call go out in the Trade channel for people to do UBRS. Having only been there once and not even getting past the first rooms I thought it would be fun to go along. Got my awesome druid along (Wbang) and off we went. I should point out (because I am quite happy to share my newbness with you) that I didn't have the flight path to Searing Gorge but fortunately a summon was forthcoming. Milled around at the entrance as you do while waiting for pick ups to get organised. Then worked out that no one had the key. Found a friendly mage to do the business for us.

Right, now we can get to killing can't we? Sort of. We have a 70 feral druid and a 70 Enhancement shaman, no one wants the leader role, the healers are in the same group and only the 57 priest seems to know which way to go but isn't all that good at typing and telling us! Recipe for disaster? Nope, this is where the power of the 70 kicks in. Half the 10 man raid was level 70 and we just plowed through the mobs to the point where we kill General Drakk, run back to the egg room and I say "Is that it?" It was literally over in about 40 minutes once we got going. Only hiccup is the eggs. No one mentioned that you can't step on them either. I assumed that you actually had to click on them to get them to open!

Once that was finished and I was shown the flight point Wbang and I decided to see what we had to do to get the Shadowforge key for BRD. Okay, it involves voluntary death! Got naked, threw myself at a dwarf (that sounds bad) and waited patiently for him to kill me. Visited the ghostly form of Franclorn Forgewright then recovered our bodies. Decided to give BRD a go with the two of us and of course Stalk was there! Wbang ended up being the tank and the healer and I was on DPS. It actually worked out very well! Ring of Law was a piece of cake and we were able to just walk past a lot of mobs as they were grey to us both. Got quite lost trying to find Fineous Darkvire but eventually he found us which unfortunately lead to druidic death. I feigned death like the big girl that I am! Got him the next time and he was a hard fight for his level but I was rewarded with 445 exp at level 62!

Next stop was The Vault... I think we knew the Golems would come to life once we opened the last coffer but didn't expect another dwarf to join them and wallop us. Of course, you always have to go back and kill those things that kill you! One dead dwarf and four dead golems later the treasure was ours. Unfortunately it was BOP wand that neither of us could use. It's a shame to see these beautiful blue items go to the vendor.

Quick run back to the statue and we both got our Shadowforge key! Another key ticked off the list. We wanted to find the Dark Keeper who was near General Angerforge. That led to much running around until we finally read the instructions and found the lock which opened the door to his area. Bang was able to do it and kill only one mob. Once we got into the General's area we realised that the mobs were getting higher level, we were getting tired and decided to call it a night. We were very chuffed with how much we managed to achieve on our own!

Giddy up

Finally picked up my Swift White Horse and what a difference it makes. I really wouldn't have imagined how much faster I feel...

Another run through Strat last night and did both live and dead side (yep, we were hanging out to get to bed by the end) and with the help of a 60 warrior we only had one death on Postmaster Malown. Yep, we got MALOWNED! I am now honored with Argent Dawn and we managed to pick up the druid gloves for my husband and the shaman bracers for my baby shaman.

Got some good practice on live side with frost trapping. Realized that Poobah's Thunderstomp breaks the trap so now I know to turn it off in those situations.

Our hero...

...is Big Red Kitty. For all things Beast Mastery I can't go past this site. Today he is talking about things you cannot do. Then he confuses things by talking about things you cannot NOT do.

"You cannot NOT have a scope on your bow or gun. That's a hunter license-pullin' offense if we catch you."

Oppps... time to go shopping. Actually, I am lucky in that I have a pocket (gnome) engineer with a skill of 278 but unlucky in that I have no recipe for Sniper Scope. Still, will whack a Deadly Scope on tonight.

Thank you for your guidance uber hunter.

Stratholme burns

Lucky me having two level 70 friends who I love spending time with. Last night we decided to give Stratholme a go. Gotta say, a 70 mage, 70 resto druid and moi made a good team. Easily got through dead side with only a few deaths which were mostly due to running too far from the druid or going afk. Knocked out all the bosses including the Baron. Not much notable loot. We will just have to go back and attempt to get the Beaststalker's Boots a few more times. Got my rep with Argent Dawn well into friendly without really intending to.

After our huge success on the dead side we headed over to live. Well, that was a whole new experience and ended up being quite a mess really. Just couldn't seem to get the mobs under control and when we wiped on Cruel Timmy we called it a night but we will definately be back there, hopefully tonight, the lay the smack on the Crusade.

Took the Gorilla in to get some experience and she has now become a he... definately all bloke there! Half way through he earned the name Poobah, as in Grand Poobah. He was an excellent tank and I managed to get him to level 56 and get his loyalty to 3 so was able to throw some more training at him during the run. Looking forward to seeing how he goes as he levels.

The mage was doing a lot of AoE's so I got to use some rather rusty talents. Pulled out the Explosive Trap but silly me only had the level 52 version (201 to 257 Fire damage and 330 additional Fire damage over 20 seconds to all within 10 yards). I trained the level 61 version this morning (263 to 337 Fire damage and burning all enemies for 450 additional Fire damage over 20 seconds) so am looking forward to seeing my threat go up with that! Also going to test out using Volley as well (80 Arcane damage to enemy targets within 8 yards every second for 6 seconds). Good to be able to test things out with people who don't mind me being a noob.

A new pet!

I haven't replaced Stalk but I have decided that it is time for an additional pet, one I can use to tank if needed. So off to Un'goro I went with a random cat by my side and I would now like to introduce "Gorilla", previously known as U'Cha and now awaiting a new name. Bit hard to tell if Gorilla is a he or a she and I am not getting close enough to check so I'll call it "her". Gorilla comes with Thunderstomp 3 which will make her extra useful against several mobs. At the moment she is rebellious and needs to know I'll be a good owner so I am taking her back to Ramparts tonight and maybe Strat. The hardest thing about taming her was making sure I had some food she would eat.

I also checked which skills Stalk was missing and I have now learnt Dash 3, Cower 6, Claw 8 and Prowl 3 from some willing (?) volunteers in Winterspring. Yep, very ashamed to say I was way behind with new tricks to teach my pets. Now to sort out where to put all of Stalk's points and I'll be laughing.

By the way I think being able to freeze trap and tame the poor beasties is cheating somewhat but I am still going to use that method.

Uber lewts

Exciting times last night with my first run in Hellfire Ramparts. Strange messy group but in the end the goal of downing the three bosses was achieved with suprisingly minimal deaths. I need to work on trapping so will be doing some of that in the next few days. The fun bit was seeing this baby drop...



...and then discovering I need to skill up from 1 in Polearms! I whacked some wolves (not much at first) in The Badlands and got my skill up to 263 so am now seeing some nice crits in the 850 region. The stats on this also immediately bumped by range crit up by 1.3%! And, most importantly, it looks HAWT, kinda like firey water on the blade. Screenshot coming. Now I just need the mail legs off the first boss and the necklace off the second boss.

Hello world!

Rather than bore all my friends in game and in real life with the exciting times of my hunter I thought I'd bring it here to blogspot. Another reason I have started this blog is to share the things I am learning as I get my hunter geared up in Outlands.

First I'd like to introduce my hunter. Ashlean is a Draenei, level 61 and until today had only used one pet. (I know.. it's bad) I tamed Stalk at level 10 right after I finished the hunter pet quest and he has been my faithful companion ever since. He's called Stalk because he was originally a Nightstalker. (I know... original, NOT)

In the early day Ashlean lived on Ravenholdt, a RP-PVP server. I didn't really know anyone and somehow blundered my way to level 59 using outdated equipment. Thank goodness I had the presence of mind to go down the Beast Mastery talent tree! I think in no small part getting to that level was due to Stalk.

So, I got to level 59 and headed to Outlands in my terrible gear and discoverd it was hard so I sulked, camped Ashlean in the inn and played some alts. Fast forward some months and a friend from work and I decided we wanted to be 1) on the same server and 2) play in Oceanic time so now I am on Nagrand and so happy with the move! The server economy is crazy (in a good way!), there are people around at the times I am playing and I have to say I don't miss PvP all that much, it certainly makes levelling easier.

Now that I have friends around who have just hit 70 (Congrats!) I am eager to get Ashlean levelled up so I can play in the big dungeons with them.