Chronicles of Raivyne, Rogue of Thunderhorn

Written by a slightly whacky (i'm not nutso, the dr said so!) rogue. Seriously, there's nothing wrong with me. IRL I'm very mild mannered... like Clark Kent.

Wednesday, May 24, 2006

Next article comming soon

Been kinda busy lately and short on inspiration to write. Will do my level best to have an article up sometime this coming weekend (3 day holiday - HOORAY!!!). I should have plenty of time to write something, and plenty of adventure to write about!

Thinking about putting a mage, rogue and preist (maybe) up on the test realm this weekend, so maybe there will be something there. I'd love to get into Naxx!!!

~raiv

Tuesday, May 16, 2006

One Shot’d

This past Friday night (May 12th) the guild went to ZG again w/high hopes of downing Venoxis, Jeklik and taking a crack at the Bloodlord. No such luck. We had 10 people that had not been in there before (some had been in, but not with us), so that slowed our set up time (a whole lot). We had to reset him a few million times as well because of little things. By the time we killed the Snake Boy it had gotten so late that peeps had to go. I was pretty drained anyway and ready for a respite, so when the raid broke for the night I was kinda relieved.

We went back the next day for our revenge. Yes, I know the three day timer… well when we got in Friday night the reset time was 7 hrs, so something was screwy. This was fine, it gave us an opportunity to kill Venoxis again. We one-shot’d him and he dropped the same boots that he’s dropped 3 of the 4 times we’ve downed him… ugh.

Then we moved on to the Bat Lady. We lost one of our tanks (surprise family visit), so I got to drag my friend NSND down to ZG!!! (and his guild kindly let him come) After another long set up we one shotted her too. Our first kill on her, although we’ve gotten her to 1% before. I’ll upload a Screenie when I get home today.

Next raid is next Saturday, and I took the liberty of penciling in an MC trash mob run in June… (bout time!)

Madness and Mayhem in Maraudon

This weeks players:

NSND: The Little Person
Raivyne: Elf One
Kights: Elf Two
Shady: Elf Three
Mal: The Human

After a hard day in AQ NSND finally decided he should get to work on his Nature Resist gear. Apparently Stoneform, while very useful, just isn’t enough (go figure), even with uber tanking skills. So, he asked if I would like to join him and kights on their quest to Mara. Naturally, I said yes. However, before I logged off of my mage I spotted our friend Shady and talked him into coming with us as well. Our warlock friend, Mal (he just can’t get enough abuse!) had inquired about our plans for the night, so we drug him with us to Mara as well. Everyone was 60, except kights’ rogue who was 56. We weren’t terribly worried about healing, so Mal brought his main (lock) instead of his priest. Once the party was fully formed, we had a warrior, 2 rogues, a hunter and a lock.

We did a full boss clear twice, but the exact order escapes me right now. After all, I’ve slept since then (I think). Since the chronological order of events is a bit skewed, I’m going to make up the boss order as I need to.

Our first trip in we went to the purple side first, so we could get to Meshlok (rare spawn). Meshlok wasn’t home just then, so we visited Celebras.

**We interrupt this article for a brief yawn**

A lot of boring stuff happened, and then we began to make our way out. Kights managed to aggro almost a whole room, with only me and shady around to help him. By the time the others made it back we had lost Kights – RIP friend. After this I didn’t see Kights for a while (I think he had trouble getting back to us). In retrospect, I don’t know why we didn’t just summon him to us. Once we finally stopped losing Kights, we started losing Shady.

At one point, Shady says “OK I’m going to walk through and aggro this group, you guys follow me and then I’ll feign death.” It was just about then that he noticed I had already skirted around them without aggroing and without using stealth. He sounded very disappointed when he said “Oh, you made it.” However he decided to do continue his scheme anyway. It wasn’t too long after that when we heard him say “RESISTED?!?”. As soon as I heard the resisted call I hit my stealth button. It was somewhere around this time when Mal and NSND put on their nekkid set and kept on trucking. Of course we all [s]laughed at[/s] mourned the loss of our compadre. RIP Shady, oh and btw – you’re fired. I lost sight of Mal and NSND during this, and I think Kights was still trying to make it back to us… Next thing I know I hear an uh-oh over my speakers, followed by the words keep running! A few laughs, ZOMG’s and one “If I had my armor on I would have made it” later I was staring at 4 dead character portraits in my party. So, I did what any responsible friend would do – I took a Screen Shot of the gimps. (Oh, did I mention that earlier that very day, NSND died in Gnomer – repeatedly? rofl) I’ll upload the screenie when I get home tonight so that everyone can join me in [s]laughing at[/s] mourning the loss of my friends.

Well after I made it out (alive of course) everyone rez’d on the orange side, still nekkid. We all did the obligatory dancing. Night elf men dancing in just a tabard is very entertaining. Suddenly, I had an idea (at this point they all should have ran). I thought it would be neat if we killed the bosses only wearing our weapons and a couple of other pieces of equipment. Mal and NSND readily agreed, but shady and kights were being party poopers. Shady agreed after a little while though, but I don’t think kights ever agreed (can you say square?) So, we headed to Noxxion eager for battle. We killed noxxion with no problems really, but our tank was actually taking damage (I think he got to ½ health or something) and decided he didn’t want to play nekkid anymore. I think everyone else must have agreed, because pretty soon I was the only one left in my skivvies. I reluctantly put my armor back on. It’s amazing how much whining can go on in these kinds of situations…

On our way between bosses I fell behind (again), and what’s even worse – I aggro’d the lil grub worms. I tried to vanish, but for some reason it didn’t work properly and they were still chasing me. So, I did what any good rogue would do, I hit my sprint and ran roughshod through the instance until I caught up with the fellas (FYI the rogue creed is “Live to fight another day”). I think I ended up getting Mal killed (sorry friend), but at least I kept the rogue creed.

While we were making our way to the Giant rock boss (Landslide or some such nonsense), we lost shady (again). Naturally, being the good friends that we are, we summoned him… Into a pack of crocs… which was soon added by a pat of rock elementals… After hearing a few yelps out of him we decided to help him. Of course, we had no choice because the lil bugger FD’d and they aggro’d us. Next thing we know he’s pulling giants into us and FD’ing… and to think, we tried to [s]kill[/s] help him out. Well, I never!

At the end of our Mara event, NSND got a few NR pieces, and shady and I both made out w/a NR trinket. We all made out with a repair bill… well everyone but me… and a ton of laughs.

The fun didn’t end there however, we decided to do a quick run through BRD so Mal could get his key, I could turn in “A Crumpled Up Note, and kights could get some equip (nothing he wanted dropped in Mara – poor kights, his luck didn’t improve in BRD). More about our PvP adventure and my BRD deaths later (yeah, I finally died in BRD).

P.S. I know that nekkid is not actually spelled nekkid. That is all.

Monday, May 08, 2006

Maudalyne the Mage

So, I took a break from my rogue for most of the weekend. Instead, I leveled up my mage. I gotta tell you… I hated my mage. At first. Now that she’s almost lvl 18, and I’ve got someone lvling a rogue right beside me, I like her. It’s definitely a different aspect of the game. I’ve never been a caster before.

Needing to break for mana was a bit difficult to get used to. I kept mashing my arcane missiles and wondering why they weren’t channeling…! Welcome to the wonderful world of OOM Raivyne. Of course, I can always use my wand a.k.a. mana in a stick, but that’s not nearly as fun. I love AE (Arcane Explosion). I don’t really care for the fire spells so much. They take a bit longer to cast it seems, and don’t look nearly as cool as my arcane ones… Flamestrike is cool though but it’s a 3 second cast. I also can’t decide between frost or fire with arcane. I’m filling out my arcane tree first since I’ve been using arcane spells the most.

Polymorph is very fun. If I were on a PvP server I would just spend all of my time Polymorphing people and running down the road to poly some more. I detest dueling, I’d much rather do some PvP. However, I would like to duel my friends with my mage just so I can /sheep, /point, /poke and /laugh. These duels would have the potential to go on for days – or until I lost all of my friends... Sheeping rats is fun, because they attack you after they come unsheeped. I just think its funny that this happens. Squirrels just run away. :/ very disappointing that.

Now I’d like to take a moment to discuss Troggs. I hate troggs, and so do all of my friends. Admit it, you hate troggs too. Why do we hate troggs? Well because they run so they don’t have to fight you one on one when you are beating them. Nor do they let you fight them 5 on 1! How rude. Of course, this is assuming you can begin the fight against just one, more often than not you get 3 or so, and then those run to bring more. Oh, and lest we forget their aggro range seems to be 20 times that of other mobs, so you almost certainly end up fighting the group behind your target group. I’m glad my rogue doesn’t have to fight troggs anymore, her repair bills would put a serious damper on my potion habit!

I'm sure Maudalyne will have many more adventures to share with everyone (all 3 of you) that reads my blog. Viva la squishie!

Wednesday, May 03, 2006

Playtime in Azeroth

This past Saturday I started what was a simple quest. Somehow during the completion of this quest, it became an eight hour extravaganza full of advernture, antics and plenty of killing. It also turned out to be a fairly profitable farming expedition.

We started out by going to Silithus to kill the Duke of Cinders for part of the upgrade quests. As you may have imagined, it turned out to be a bit more complicated that just arriving in the zone, summoning him and killing him. We had to get items to summon lesser elementals that dropped the items to turn in to be able to summon the four greater ones (i.e. the duke). By the time we actually got him summoned and killed we were having such a time that we just kept right on summoning and killing, and getting more summoning mats to summon more and kill them.

We also had some PvP encounters, most of them involving the same stupid hunter… Alone + Flagged = GG. Every once in a while he would find one of us alone and he would try to kill us. Foolish! I’m not really sure what made him think he could kill any of us before the rest of the crew caught up to him. So, needless to say he died a few times. We were very surprised to run across the same hunter more than an hour later. Yep, you guessed still flagged and still alone. GG. More fun for us.

I also got really tired of swapping clothes during this affair so my rogue ended up spending a lot of the time ½ naked, or in a purple dress, or w/just a guild tabard on top. It was mildly amusing I suppose, particularly to the guys I think. I just really need to get a wardrobe mod… heh.

Somewhere during the adventure we picked up a warlock that we met when we picked him up for a “45 min Baron Run” on his priest a couple weeks prior. The Baron run ended up becoming more of a marathon and one of those “we never speak of this to anyone” events. We had one heck of a time though! I think we ended up clearing out every single mob in the place. Why would we do this, you ask? Well best laid plans… Somehow or another we ended up aggroing every single mob that we were supposed to be skipping. Blame it on bad luck, a drunk hunter, an overtired warrior, or a stupid rogue, but that’s what happened. Apparently the Priest had a good time during the debacle though, because he didn’t hesitate to join our adventure in Silithus.

I don’t really think I’ve illustrated the fun that we had, but well it’s just so hard to recreate those moments and do them justice. I’ll just leave you with this little equation: Good friends + Ventrilo + Evening off = Good Times.

Monday, May 01, 2006

Raivyne's New Gear (Screens)

Well, I got my Shadowcraft Legs, Shoulders and Boots upgraded this weekend! FINALLY! I really like the dark blue and black better than the old grey and black. It even matches my guild tabard - which i'm sporting to hide my non-matching tunic. I've had a great time with the upgrade quests too, and I don't really mind the time or money I've invested into them. My guild isn't in MC, and I can always make more money. The Darkmantle set is a good option for me now. I may or may not upgrade some of it to ZG gear at a later date... I really like the energy proc!





Champions of the Arena

So, I had 3 goals for this weekend; 1) Complete “The Challenge” (BRD Arena fight for the Tier .5 upgrades) 2) Get my Shadowcraft Head piece and 3) Get a Painweaver Band from General Drakk in UBRS.

Well, I never made it to UBRS – unless you count the “UBRS” group I joined that somehow ended up in LBRS… /quit raid.

As for the Shadowcraft Cap, well Dark Master Gandling was less than accommodating on that one. /pout. I swear if one more Beaststalker BoP set item drops when there is no hunter in the group I’m just gonna lose it! OK, so really I won’t, but I will make sure to yell in /guild “#@$*%^ BEASTSTALKER @#&%!!!!!!!!!!!” in the same manner I did Sunday. I wasn’t so upset when Valor dropped because it went to the warrior in the group. Not that he needed it, as he has his full Tier 1 set (Might), but he’s collecting it for solo play gear (I think he thinks his protection spec butt will do more damage w/it when he farms… you know I <3 ya enes!) After that second run it was tough to get a group so I said heck with it and bummed around for a few hours until I went to Strat – Baron side – with some guildies. I was soo tired, or I may have enjoyed this run more.

I managed to complete the Arena fight and turn in my old Shadowcraft Legs, Boots and Shoulder pieces for the Darkmantle ones. Woot!!! I’m pretty damned happy about that one. We beat Theldren’s Army without “The Unholy Trinity”, which was pretty darn cool because everything I’ve read said “OMG YOU HAVE TO HAVE A MAGE!!” “ZOMG TAKE TWO!!!” We had a prot spec warrior, a lock, a priest and two rogues. My rogue pal was skeptical as to whether we could get it done w/out a mage, but I had no doubts. We had the lock seduce the goblin, the other rogue sapped the rogue class, I believe we had the lock keep fear on the healer class, or we may have MC’d the healer class (fuzzy I’ve slept since then), our warrior tanked the warrior class and the mage died first. All credit to everyone in the group, if they hadn’t known how to play their class it would have never worked. The poor warlock was seducing, fearing and dotting different targets and he did an outstanding job. The warrior kept saying how useless he was, because he couldn’t taunt or DPS a lot, but I would have rather done the quest with him than without him. More fun with friends. We ended up doing the whole fight another time for fun.

After the arena fight I should have went to Scholo to score my cap, but instead we went to Silithus to work on the next part of the Tier .5 upgrade quest. I had more fun doing this anyway! More on Playtime later…

Oh, and I’m finally wearing my guild tabard, it hides my unmatching armor and matches my new set pieces very well! I’ll upload some pictures later.

Toodles

Venoxis! Sit! Roll Over! Play dead! Good Boy…

So, in the end once the Guard came together, snake boy was a puddy tat. We had to reset him one time because we had melee run in, but didn’t think about where they were coming from. So, we lost a few healers and casters to the chain lightning effect…

The next time I suggested melee stay to the right of the room away from the casters, that way when they ran in, it would be less likely that the chain connected to the casters. It worked and we had no problems downing him! Everyone was very happy. Here’s a screenie of the crew (we had to borrow a few people from another guild 2 mages and a pally).



Onward to the Bat Cave!!! We attempted the Bat Lady 3 times, and she was at 1% when everyone died the third time. Unfortunately one of the mages had to leave, and we didn’t get another attempt. I’m confident that she would have died had we tried again. I’m also confident that next time I bring a Greater Fire Protection Potion! You see, she would have died if I had not got caught by a fire bomb in mid-bandage when she was at only 30% health… **kick, kick, kick**

Unfortunately I don’t have any screen shot of her near death as I was too busy rooting for the team, and watching everything unravel before my wisp eyes… **kick kick**

Next raid set for Friday night, and I expect we will have the snake, bat and hopefully Bloodlord. If we get the Bloodlord we’ll head to the Spider – Ouch! Not only do I hate spiders, but this spider is particularly nasty. I’m confident that Shadow Guard will figure her out in the near future though.

Now, I bid you adieu.