More Loot Boasting

Sorry for the ongoing neglect; it's stomach trouble time here at Chez Mri. But I am getting in some play and I'm getting some goodies.

Tivara now has the Accursed Bow of the Elite, thanks to our first guild victory over Instructor Razuvious in Naxxramas. Yes. This bow's focal point is a demonic skull with glowing eyes and an impaling claw coming out the top of its head. Where did my old hard rock albums get to, anyway *rummage*...

And she made the Nerubian Reinforced Quiver, thanks to getting honored with the Ebon Blade after a bunch of fun quests in Icerown. It's got 28 slots for arrows, which is absolutely wonderful when doing a run of heroic instances or raiding, and it nicely keeps up that "I am being possessed by an album cover of the late '70s" vibe:

And yes, that's Sagarmatha in Naxxramas. He hit level 80 and gets to come join the fun. :)

From 71 to 73: Another Miscellany

This is all just stuff that made an impression on me, before I get on to covering developments in the next zone or two.

How you get out of a Scourge-fighting tank, when it's used up:

A baby mammoth we just freed from a cruel trap, trumpeting its thanks before running off:

The grandest mammoth of the Borean Tundra, happy for our good deeds (and Druids for the Ethical and Humane Treatment of Animals will be the subject of some small post in the future):

High on the list of people you don't really expect to show up to help deal with a challenge, providing an unexpectedly cool capstone to a quest chain:

One of my favorite quests so far:

The insult deployed, not long before Bjorn charged after Tivara, right into Lydell's camp and got killed:

A very thorough product warning:

Ember Clutch, where proto-dragon eggs hatch most happily, and a proto-dragon whelp taking umbrage at Tivara's presence:

A vrykul ghost, forever summoning:

Getting custom delivery to a band of pirates:

Pirates let you use the greatest stuff sometime, when you're willing to go to haunted islands they aren't:

One of the orca of the Howling Fjord, with Sagarmatha for scale:

A storm giant fighting the guards at New Agamand; the guards themselves are out of sight, below the rim of that bluff Tivara's on:

One of the major dwarvish excavations at the rim of the Howling Fjord:

Another great quest text:

And that clears the miscellany backlog. Next post, likely, will be sights of the Dragonblight, the next zone along the way.

Pet Notes, Level 70-72

Tivara hit 72 last night, thanks to helping out the swell undead guys at New Agamand. (Some of my characters would be horrified by it all. It's fortunate for my desire to explore that Tivara's personality includes plenty of room for finding the plague project fascinating.) Along the way I've been playing around with a variety of pets.

• Gorilla: Sagarmatha. No question about it, gorillas remain my pets of choice. The tanky pet is most comfortable and enjoyable for me in more circumstances than any other option.

• Wolf: Scourgebane. Almost as dear to my heart as Sagarmatha, Scourgebane is my instance pet of choice (everyone who does damage likes Furious Howl, pretty much), and I bring her out for questing when I feel like doing some single-target attacking and less volleying.

• Devilsaur: Gorynych. I'm genuinely uncertain about ol' Stompy. He's fun, and though he's taller than a rhino (see below), he doesn't have the bulk or thick fur, so he's easier to see around. But I don't feel any real urge to use him outside instancing. I suspect I should probably keep him leveled up and see how he does in higher-level instances and raids. I can afford the stable slot, at least for now.

• Worm: Kurgan. Not bad so far, but I haven't given it a really hard workout yet. Hoping to get the chance to do that soon.

• Rhino: Byran, retired. I gave it a shot, but it just wasn't the thing for me. They're big and massive enough to make the same kind of visibility and access problems for me that large-winged flying pets do, and while the knockback effect is hilarious to watch, it's much harder to control and maneuver with than gorillas' thunderstomp. I retired her, with thanks.

• Bird of Prey: Shravana, auditioning. I wasn't really planning to try out a new bird of prey, but then I saw someone with the fjord hawk matriarch in Coldarra, and Nyo's player asked me if I'd thought about getting one, and off we went! Not bad at all, so far. I'm not sure she actually does anything Scourgebane doesn't, but I'm willing to keep on experimenting. She has relatively short, thick wings, which means she interferes less than I'd have expected with my visibility.

Come level 74 for Tivara and I'll think about what to do dump to get a Blighthound to play with.

From 70 to 71: A Miscellany, part 1

Tivara earned her first level of Lich King experience last night. Color me happy! This is a real grab bag of things I've seen, done, and/or thought about along the way.

The interior of Utgarde Keep (seen in part 2 of my intro tour) is gorgeous:

Most of the inhabitants are vrykul, up to bad things on behalf of their new chosen master, the Lich King. These fellows were making powerful weapons when we came along:

But they're not alone. There are, for instance, enslaved proto-dragons—bipedal rather than quadrupedal like the dragons found on the other continents:

And the frenzied geists, which I know are going to make at least one of my readers think, "Hey, they're up on their Barker":

I haven't yet taken a character into the Nexus, the other introductory dungeon. I do have a friend who specifically hopes that he can be grouped with me when I do, to get my reactions, which makes it sound all the more intriguing. Pictures will no doubt follow.

The cold seas of Northrend turn out to be rich in life, including my favorites:

And inland and uphill, a stone giant take it all with him:

In the Warcraft universe, dryads are tangible nature spirits, and centaurs are the offspring of their seduction and corruption by elementals. Northrend has suitably arctic dryads, the frost nymphs:

Meanwhile, back at the Borean Tundra, this is the way to scout contested territory:

Down on the coast, the marauding kvaldir (mentioned here briefly earlier) are at work destroying anyone and anything along the shores. They come wrapped in a formidable magical mist:

Yes, while Tivara is in the mist, I see her field of view reduced and colors de-saturated. It's a wonderful eerie bit of scene-setting.

There are also some formidable Scourge forces in a nearby valley that's been sprayed with poisons and diseases, like the Warsong Aberration seen here:

But it's okay, because after a series of quests to gather up crucial materials for repair and upgrade, Tivara got to charge right into the middle of their ranks...in this:

I've drawn circles to help you spot Tivara in the midst of the tainted air and goblin machinery. Alas, no still picture can capture the experience. The thing chugs and trembles and belches smoke and *insert maniacal giggling*. So. Yeah. It shoots rockets and stuff, but you can also fire up the blades on the front end and just grind down the Scourge in front of you. This quest calls for grinding down a hundred of them (and also rescuing trapped soldiers whose vehicles got taken down in earlier waves of the assault and counter-assault):

I've got some other things I want to share pictures of, but for now I'll wrap up with a look at gear. This is Tivara's guildmate Nyo, mentioned from time to time already. Here she is showing new helmet and weapon, which go very nicely with the Argent Dawn tabard and undead-slaying gear she got from hunting Scourge invaders:

First Looks at Northrend, Part 3: Mostly Fjord

• Part 1: Borean Tundra and Points West
• Part 2: East By Turtle

First, a few omissions redressed. Here's another view of the cliffs that border almost all of the Howling Fjord zone (with a zeppelin incoming from Tirisfal Glade visible on the left):

And here are vrykul seen in training from afar with the help of the hunter spell Eagle Eye and in combat closeup with no special help needed:

Now on with the original tour.

The Forsaken are (to my taste) some of the most interesting characters, both PC and NPC, in the game. They're undead. They used to be part of the Scourge's army, but managed to break free. (The story behind that escape is complex, and includes a dose of factional strife within the Burning Legion's upper echelons. Some of it's available in the lore pages at Blizzard's site.) They've got their free will back, but nobody seems to know how to restore life to the undead, and nobody else is really what you'd call enthusiastic about them. They're in the Horde partly because they have more active conflicts with the Alliance—they regard their current lands as theirs, while the Alliance tend to feel that dead things should lie down and get out of the way—and partly because this way Thrall and Cairne can keep a closer eye on them.

And, of course, the Royal Apothecary Society actually is working on an improved plague intended to do what the plague that made the Scourge in the first place did, but better. Consider this bit of quest-giving text from Apothecary Lydon (who, yes, does have a rotten mood and vicious temper):

Ah, another wretched day in Tarren Mill. All of this clean air puts me in such a foul mood, <name>.

The sooner we can plague the humans here, the better. I've been conducting intense studies on possible killing agents to use in my concoctions but I haven't the time to collect them all.

In the Eastern Kingdoms, most of the centers of Undead...well, "residence" if not exactly "life"...are semi-ruined towns and villages, damaged by years of fighting and not particularly thoroughly repaired. The Undercity, their capital beneath the even more thoroughly ruined city of Lordaeron, is more exotic, with its Tim Burton-esque aesthetic glorifying and amplifying images of death. I read in promotional blurbs that in Lich King we'd see the Forsaken up to more innovative society-building, and seeing it was high on my list of priorities.

In the Fjord interior, Tivara and I found an Apothecary Camp settlement. Sure enough, they're not resting on old gories, er, glories:

Further east, on the Fjord's far coast, there's the major Forsaken settlement at Vengeance Landing. Look at the freshness and...okay, what's a good undead equivalent to "vitality?"...of the area around the zeppelin dock, when compared to the tower at the far end of this ride in the Eastern Kingdoms:

This is inside the Vengeance Landing building with the Jacob's ladders, to the right of the zeppelin tower in the picture above. Tivara is taking note of the pot of boiling blood, on the left:

It's going to be interesting times around the Forsaken, I'm thinking.

And now to round things off, a few shots taken while flying around hither and yon, once Tivara had picked up useful flight paths.

Vrykul longhouses near Utgarde Keep, with the major Alliance settlement in the Fjord visible down in the lower right:

The Alliance harbor in Borean Tundra, whose name Tivara didn't get because they weren't shouting very politely:

Wrecked ships on the Dragonblight coast, between the Borean Tundra and Howling Fjord:

One of the Scourge's plague spreaders up to no good, also in the Dragonblight:

And that's it for first impression! Still in the queue, pictures of Utgarde Keep on the inside, and also what'll likely be a two-part post on the death knights, who proved surprisingly captivating to me personally for reasons that may make interesting reading.

The Scourge Event as Tivara Sees It

This is really just an excuse for a bunch of screen shots, and a little exposition for my friends who read this blog but don't play WoW.

The Scourge is an eclectic army of the undead, created by some members of the demonic Burning Legion as their next weapon in the war against Azeroth and its inhabitants. Many of the Scourge are mindless, but not all—it's got officers with substantial powers of personal choice, and even in the ranks there are individuals who can think for themselves at least some of the time. The supreme commander of the Scourge is the Lich King, an entity fusing the corrupted souls of human paladin Arthas and orc shaman Ner'zhul. (You can see the state of things with him in the intro video for Wrath of the Lich King. The voice is that of King Terenas, Arthas' father.)

The Scourge is strongest in Azeroth's northern reaches. The Lich King and his Frozen Throne wait way at the top end of Northrend, the continent being opened up in the new expansion pack. In the currently accessible realms, the northern zones of the Eastern Kingdoms are most likely to be Scourge-Ridden. The Plaguelands are what used to be the four northern human kingdoms, including Arthas' own Lordaeron. But every so often the Scourge reaches out in an effort to grab more territory. Its mobile necropolises go ranging far and wide, unleashing waves of summoned undead who must be driven back before the crystals that do the summoning can be destroyed. This is the second such outreach since the end of the Third War (which was Horde + Alliance versus the Burning Legion). It probably won't work in the sense of giving the Scourge any permanent gains, but the effort ties up a lot of resources anyway.

This is the necropolis parked outside Thunder Bluff, the tauren capital:

This is the one outside Orgrimmar, capital of the Horde, taken from wyvern-back as Tivara was flying across Durotar:

And this is one in the Tanaris Desert, in mid-attack:

Here's the necrotic shard at the center of one beachhead in Tanaris. Notice that there are lots of corpses around it and nobody standing up except Tivara and Sagarmatha. Beat-down of the shard's last defenders is about to begin:

This is another necrotic shard, this one in the Blasted Lands, with the clearing still in progress:

Each necrotic shard has health, just like characters and monsters, linked to the undead it summons. Each time one of its summonees gets killed, it takes some damage. So the first step is to kill a lot of them—two hundred, give or take:

The mound of re-dead bodies beneath our banner shows this work in progress. The banner itself, by the way, comes from the Argent Dawn, a cross-faction union of dedicated Scourge foes, who are among the few genuine heroes in the game. It's always a pleasure to work with them. People who collect enough of the necrotic runes that empower these invaders can use them as currency to buy useful tools from the Argent Dawn, including battle banners. When they're planted, they unleash a consecrating fire just like the one paladins can invoke. Very handy.

When the necrotic shard is broken enough, Scourge engineers teleport in to try to re-energize it. Notice that the shard is now purple-black:

The engineers keep working regardless of what's going around them...

...until someone burns a few necrotic runes to break their concentration. At this point the engineer releases the Shadow of Doom lurking inside:

When all four are defeated (if, of course, they are), the necrotic shard collapses, and nothing remains but the great smell of Brut:

When enough of its necrotic shards have been destroyed, an invading necropolis' commander packs it in for the day, and that zone is safe for now. For a few hours, at least, until the necropolis is back with a fresh set of shards.