Our little experiment in small friendly casual guilds is going pretty well, with a few very friendly folks joining over the weekend. We weren’t flooded with requests for an invite, which I was profoundly grateful for. We had a few people join, one at a time, and that gave us a chance to get to know each of you a little bit, rather than face a flood and go into fake-ass politician mode. (Fake smile, quick handshake, “Hey, how are ya”, NEXT!)

However, as we mostly had some level 1 alts come in to the guild, we are left a bit short in the ‘running a five man’ department. There is nothing wrong about that, but as they are level 1-10 right now, it does leave a bit of time before nekkid Deadmines runs can begin.

We did have a couple really nice folks do the crazy thing of server transferring over to join, but without a healer, 5 mans are a little tight just now, and Heroics are out of the question.

We are left with wanting to do SOMEthing once or twice a week.

So here is where I try to leverage (ick, business speak!) my blog into some in game activity.

If you happen to be on Kael’thas-US, and you are running Karazhan in your guild and could use a tank and a sword spec rogue, just give me an email with the contact for up there.

I don’t need any gear out of Karazhan, but I do like to run something each week, and if you are just starting up maybe having a geared tank could help. And I know Cassieann was really enjoying learning the fights in there, and she is pretty well geared too. I’d be careful though, she has a laundry list of gear she wants out of there a mile long.

Anyway, this isn’t aimed at serious raiders. If you are working on getting organized and fine tuning your teamwork, I’m sure you want to stay ‘in-guild’ for your progression runs. Having someone walk you through a difficult fight may help getting that fight down, but it doesn’t do much for developing teamwork and coordination for when you face the mroe difficult fights on your own.

But if you’re on Kael’thas, and you’re a pretty fun group of people that could just use a little oomph from a tank and a rogue once in a while, give us a call. I’d be grateful!

Our only thing is, we’d need to have some advance warning of when you’d like to go, or what weeknights work for you, because we are in the process of planning our reclaiming of our lives. We’ve got gym time thrice a week in the afternoons, some racketball on weekend mornings, time out with friends, and playdates for Alex to organize. So please, if you see us on, don’t be offended if we can’t go on a ‘last minute’ kind of thing. We finally might have something OUTSIDE the house going on!

Oh, and I hardly ever gloat or throw out the epeen on here for gear, since there ain’t much to brag about in the Karazhan level loot, but I did want to say… I got my Tameless Breeches last night. And applied my Nethercleft Leg Armor to ‘em.

I don’t give a darn that I’m wearing a skirt now, I gots me my new legs! Woot!

/happybeardance

So, this weekend was a lot of fun.

We have a finished, carpeted basement, and a large portion of it flooded over the weekend, so our basment is a colelction of large fans, ripped up carpet and ruined drywall in patches. Yay us!

In other news, my Hunter went from 375 Herbalism to 291 Enchanting. I’m not planning on actually doing anything useful with Enchanting, I’m kind of holding that slot for Inscriptions in the next expansion, but having 2x Herbalism was silly. So now I can D/E anything that comes my way, and if I get it high enough I can keep my priest supplied with Wizard and Mana Oils.

Oh, you casters out there… you do use Superior Wizard and Superior Mana Oils as consumables along with your food and potions when you raid, right? You knew they stack with existing weapon enchants, right? Yeah, I knew you did.

Just like I’m sure all you feral druids are using the Adamantite Weightstone on your Earthwardens every time you raid.

Sure you are.

Anyway, so as far as Enchanting goes, I’ve leveled it once before to max on Windshadow, so the process was familiar… although when powerleveling the new Enchanting level requirement to D/E stuff is painful. I ain’t complaining, since I figure it’s the only thing thaqt prevents some folks from having all their gear D/E’d after being ninja’ed, but still made it more challenging.

The one lesson I’d like to pass on; if your server is as evil as mine when it comes to enchanting mats on the Auctiuon House, don’t forget to use your Disenchanting as a cost saver. With Auctioneer installed, Enchantrix will show you what an item has a chance to D/E into, as well as the quantity of stuff it provides.

What the hell does that mean?

It means when I needed obscene amounts of Vision Dust, I could have crafted Black Mageweave Gloves, and I did that for a little, but what if you have no Mageweave cloth and the AH is out of it? Do I farm Deadwood Furbolgs for two hours to get Mageweave to make Bolts of Mageweave to craft Black Mageweave Gloves to D/E into Vision Dust?

Well, yeah, I did that, until I lost patience.

The other thing you can do is do a search on the AH for all armor items from level 31-39, mouseover the item icons to see what each one D/E’s into, and if it’s dirt cheap AND has a high chance to D/E into the mat you want, buy it.

I needed about 100 Vision Dust. They were selling for about 1.4 gold each on our AH there this weekend.

I spent about 45 gold on items, disenchanted them, and not only got the Vision Dust I needed, but also a slew of other mats to make other enchants to level.

Word to the wise… if you are short on enchanting mats, go cruising the Auction House for underpriced greens to D/E.

Last note… there was a nice Wand at Sporeggar Revered that my priestie wanted. So I needed Sanguine Hibiscus for ther rep turn ins, and it costs silly amounts. So I decided to stealth into Underbog to go harvest it.

Now, if you happen to be a bear, and bored, and a Herbalist, Underbogs may sound like fun. You stealth in, dodge around the packs of mobs and harevst some Ancient Lichen, some Sanguine Hibiscus, it’s all good.

I found that I could stealth all the way past the first boss and up to the first patrolled ramp of the naga area before encoutnering mobs that can see through stealth.

I did that three times, and then boredom and laziness encouraged me to accidentally aggro the 4 pack of Underbats that wobbles around just after the first boss.

Instead of panicking like a mage I knew in Legatum would have done and running for the instance entrance (sorry, inside joke there), I instead stayed calm, manuevered the group into a corner away from the patrolling Bog Giants, triggered bear form and Demoralyzing Roar, and my Pocket Watch, and settled down to some serious whacking to see how many I could take down.

Popping Feral Regeneration was necessary before the fight was done, but at the end I stood, a bear triumphant. And surprised.

I looted them suckers and got two more Sanguine Hibiscus.

Wait, what? These guys drop them THAT OFTEN as loot?

Hmmm… I knew they dropped as loot, but never noticed that high a return.

And that led to the next thought… I wonder if I can solo a Bog Giant?

Ummm…. yeah. Easily.

Okay, new mission. I ain’t stealthing the instance anymore, now I’m just clearing the instance, at least until the Nagas.

And I did. Pull the underbats, whack ‘em down. Pull a Bog Giant, whack it down.

Note; if you decide to pull one of the groups of Underbog Shamblers, Frenzies and Lurkers… kill the damn Shambler first. And pull out all the stops to do it, because the little bastard heals himself constantly.

But yeah, I know it’s only a level 63 elite instance, but it’s still funny when you make that transition from “I need to sneak around” to “Screw these punk ass bitches, they’re going down.”

Do you stealth througth instances for good loot? Do you solo bear romp through some fun places? Share your favorites, I could use a new place to go sneak around!