Double Your Blackrock, Double Your Fun

by on July 10, 2006 at 9:26 am
Posted In: MMO

So, after last week’s adventure, we decided to go into BRD again this Saturday.

Well, we did. We also went in spur-of-the-moment on Friday.

Crew was Blanc, Dunain, Blondiewood, Jariedthe, and Thermidor. Blanc has been wanting to get the plans for Black Dragonscale Leggings for a while, and we headed over to the likely area, the Highway for some farming only to realize what we were looking for wasn’t there. There’s various Anvilrage troops there, but further research shows that that Anvilrage Captains (the only thing that drops them) appear twice while doing the Jailbreak quest, and there’s three in the Throne Room. So there’s a max of 5 possible people each with a 2% chance. Great.

So, we decided to do Jailbreak. Lots of clearing later, I realize that I left my evidence in the bank, so only Blanc and Jariedthe got to complete it. There was one room we forgot to clear, that also generated new guys for the quest. That fight got exciting, but in the end we handled it very well. Anvilrage Captain count: 2. Plans: 0

Thence to the Bar. I’d finally bumped up my reputation to Honored, so I bought the next Blacksmithing plan, and stared at the demand for 10 Dark Iron Ore for more rep. They’ll take other things… but it’s all rare Molten Core stuff (generally worth 90 gold on the Muradin Auction House vs somewhere around 10 gold for 10 ore). On to the Summoner’s Tomb, and successfully do my turn-in with Gloom’rel. I can now smelt Dark Iron Ore into Bars (at an 8-to-1 ratio!). We go on, kill a few fire elementals, get Thermi Attuned to the Core, and I actually use the Dark Forge (the only place to smelt Dark Iron – not just any fire will do)… just ’cause I can.

And then into the Lyceum again. And we fail again. This time, it’s from a lack of being able to find a torchbearer. Whenever we got to where one was, he wasn’t there. However, we do survive in the environment of lots of hostile dwarves and quick respawns for quite a while. It’s late, so that’s it. But we know it’s possible now. We can survive, we just have to get the torches and get the doors open.

Oh, sorry, one more thing that night. Fickle Muse’s triumphant entry into Stormwind next to Marshal Windsor to confront Onyxia!

And the next night we did it all again. Well, mostly. Brunev instead of Thermidor. We decided to drag out Jailbreak until we can get the plans, so Brunev turned it in, but not me. Visited the Bar, I actually handed in some Dark Iron Ore. Judging off of the results, I’ll need 2400 ore to hit Exalted. Still might happen someday. Got Brunev Attuned. Smelted some more ore (and later visited the Dark Anvil to create Dark Iron Shoulders for Blanc, who’s starting to get serious about a fire-resist set). So all that effort has at least *some* practical payoff. Went to the Lyceum.

And died.

Well, okay, we did fairly well. We got a torch (and now know what those Torchbearers look like). Got to the door, then figured out about the platforms with the braziers we needed to light. Armed with this knowledge, we went back, did it again, and this time we got it right.

We finally got to the end of the instance: the Throne Room.

We cleared that, challenged the Emperor, and kept Princess Bronzebeard up while we got him. She turned friendly, ran back to the throne, and turned hostile. Blondie got too close, and she charged us. We had to kill her. T_T

King Bronzebeard in Ironforge wouldn’t talk to us.

It seems since the latest patch, the quest’s been bugged. We’re supposed to talk to the Princess, and we have the official ‘Compete’ mark on the quest, but we need a non-violent Princess to talk to. So we’ll have to do the fight again one it’s fixed. Well, its not as if we aren’t coming back here anyway.

Anvilrage Captain count: 7. Plans: 0.

And we confronted Onyxia again.

Thinking back to the initial BRD run, we’ve obviously come a long ways. The front areas that challenged us so are now more time consuming than anything else. Some of it is knowing the instance. Some of it is certainly better teamwork. It doesn’t feel like our equipment has changed much, but I’m sure that’s part of it too. We’re actually starting to go through the long progression of level 60 equipment. Blanc and I have yet to deal with the Dungeon Sets, but we’ve still got a slow trickle of new equipment.

I wonder how we’d do against Scryer now….

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Of Boars, Bars, and not enough Bars (of Gold)

by on July 3, 2006 at 10:31 am
Posted In: MMO

Well, things have been a bit active. A while ago, we had scheduled a Horde-side Razorfen Crawl run, only to realize at the last second that the two main characters the run was for (Malzina and Uhgreah) were too low level to get the final quest. So we put it off a month.

Three and a half weeks later points out that the run is coming up again. And I’ve barely even touched Malzina in the meantime. So, I begin a program to get Malzina up five levels in (effectively) three evenings. It… didn’t go so great at first, and I had one frustrating evening where nothing wanted to work, which was an especial pain as I normally find the frost-mage lots of fun.

Then I realize the run is late Sunday, instead of early Saturday. So, I end up just kind of coasting over the level 30 finish line…. The run itself was short-handed, but certainly fun.

After that, we decided to hold an event for the midsummer celebration. The WoW holiday includes quests to visit bonfires lit all over the world, and the quests to vist the high-level areas are accessible to very low-level characters, so we decided to send a high-level team with a warlock to the bonfires and summon all the low-level characters for their quest. While we were at it, we also made it a flight point collection event, summoning the lowbies to the flight points so they’ll have them in the future.

This, unfortunately, can be quite time consuming. Especially when the highest level Hordies are mid-40s going into an area meant for 50-60. The initial Horde-side event only covered half of Kalimdor. However, it was still a blast, and a neat group activity.

The Alliance side-run the next day, still had one minor problem. While we have plenty of level 60s, our highest warlock (Shrimpette) is only mid-40s. Still we got all of Kalimdor done, and several low-level characters got to turn in a quest that normally wouldn’t be doable until 50 or so.

And Saturday night was the latest in our string of Blackrock Depth runs. Slightly different lineup this time: Blanc, Dunain, Brunev, Blondiewood, and Jariedthe. Those last two are both druids, and Blondie acted as main healer and Jariedthe as second tank and emergency backup healer. We got a few different things done:

First we went after Bael’Gar so Blanc could finish his quest. This area had given us trouble last time, and given me doubts about how we were going to get through the rest of BRD. After shaking out the new group, the highway went much smoother. While Blondie didn’t always have mana left at the end of the fight, she wasn’t needing to down a potion half-way through either.

We went down to the prison section to get Brunev caught up with the rest of us on that chain. That area is getting downright easy.

We went to the bar. There’s been a couple of ‘bar runs’ recently, but Dunain wasn’t on them, so we got to do the two main quests there. I’m not sure what we did (have to check one of the guides) but we got the city watch coming in the back door to ‘investigate’. We took that on… without properly preparing. We got some bar patrons involved, and pretty much wiped (I feigned). However, we took out all but one guy, so once ready we lead him out the back door and finished him off.

Went around and got the bosses/drops for Marshal Windsor, so we’re probably doing a jail break run next time. Went and cleared all the way to the back. …And I discovered that I’d used a bar out of my stash of Gold Bars. And, looking at it, I had misremembered that Gloom’rel wanted 20, not 10. So, still no Dark Iron Smelting for me. Next time, next time…. While we were there, we got ourselves ‘attuned’ to Molten Core. Who knows if we’ll ever go there. But we’re ready if we want to.

Then, we went into the Lyceum. It did not work out well. Part of the problem is that we were often getting a few groups on us at once. We bogged down, and then wiped. And I’m just not sure what we can do. One thought is that we were too tank-heavy and needed more DPS for that room, but being tank heavy is what allowed us to do so well in the rest….

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Birthday…

by on June 23, 2006 at 9:06 am
Posted In: Life

Well, yesterday was my birthday.

It’s not something I’ve made a big deal about for the last few years. Normally, I’ll mention it once or twice about a month beforehand, and then forget about it in favor of ‘new shineys’ until maybe the day before or so. That’s not really enough time to plan anything, so… I often don’t mention it then, either, not wanting people to feel pressured over my screw up.

Anyway, last night was the usual anime-night. Which in itself is not a bad way of spending a birthday. Then, after dinner, Coppercheetah and Jareth (our hosts), bring out a nice ice-cream cake they’d run out and gotten before I got there.

Thank you guys. Very much. It really means a lot.

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19 Backs to the Sea

by on June 22, 2006 at 6:46 pm
Posted In: ASL

This was originally posted to my LiveJournal blog while the game was ongoing; I then posted the rest of it in replies to that post. I’ve reconstructed it here.

Pointe-du-Hoc, France, 6 June 1944: Confusion had brought only nine of the LCAs carrying the 2nd Ranger Battalion to shore at the base of the cliffs protecting a fortified coastal battery supposedly capable of bringing fire onto the approaches to Omaha and Utah beaches. The Rangers’ mission was to take it out. Despite difficulties, three companies under Colonel Rudder scaled the cliffs and overran the position against sporadic and unorganized resistance, only to find the guns had long since been removed from their casemates. But once atop the cliff, there was no returning to the sea. The Rangers set up a perimeter to await their relief at the hands of the 116th Infantry and 5th Rangers. German reaction to the lodgement, given all that was happening around them, was understandably slow and limited to sniper fire until 1600, when the Germans mounted their first serious push against the isolated Americans on the cliff edge.

As a needed change of pace, Wednesday’s on-line session between me and Patch Bunny was Advanced Squad Leader scenario 19 “Backs to the Sea”. This game is what the Vassal program was originally written for, but I haven’t done much ASL since about 2000, and none at all for the last year-and-a-half. Never being the greatest master of the intricate rules, I was more than a bit rusty on the particulars.

We decided by die-roll to give Patch the defending Americans. As the Germans, I have a large, but poor and brittle force, and I need to get about half of it pretty much on the cliff line in seven turns, in good shape. Doable (actually, quite doable, the win-loss record on this scenario shows the Germans are favored, we’ve given the Americans the balance option to compensate). He sent me his setup Monday.

Most of the terrain is open, and covered with shellholes (the artifact of much naval and aerial bombardment, to be sure). Patch’s setup obviously concentrated most of his forces on the side where there’s at least some cover to advance through. So, I put mine on the other end. There’s still a few things to take advantage of (the lack of any hills or buildings to get a commanding view helps here), but it is much more open.

Things went… okay at first. One leader broke and went down in quality, and later got himself wounded. Otherwise I generally got where I wanted to be. Another squad broke to a sniper. Patch started rearranging his forces to get at me. And then I got some hot dice and we made a couple mistakes that benefited me. I eliminated a squad on my flank, and ended up eliminating two dummy stacks of his on mistakes. (To be sure, I was already pretty sure about one, and starting to wonder about the other, but it’s still not at all fair to him.)

So now I’m attempting to press into the open middle area without getting too shot up. And I figure Patch deserves full choice on the next game/scenario/sides.

Patch has been quite aggressive with e-mailing responses, and we had a long session on line last night, which got us into Turn 4.

I’ve had my share of problems, but my lead troops are pretty much on schedule, and Patch is having more than his fair share of problems, culminating with back-to-back breaks of his two mortars.

Of course, one of mine is lagging behind, and is effectively out of action until it can find a good vantage point again (darn things are heavy), and he eliminated the half-squad that was using the other. So out of four light mortars in the scenario, all are out of action right now.

I should win at this rate, but I’m still a little nervous about getting the required eight squads over to board 7 in time. Three? No problem. Five? Looks doable. After that, I’m a little thin on guys far forward enough to crawl in. With current luck, though, I may very well get a good chance to walk through the open to a win….

I am starting to remember the nuances of the game again. I’m probably at about 70% of where I was at my best to understand the ASL rules, which is a nice feeling. Another game or two with Patch and I should start getting further down the road to mastery.

…And we finished last night [Jul 5]. I managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. It ended up close. I had a chance at it until halfway through my final movement phase. Not a great chance, but I could have forced play of the final American turn.

Die luck was all over the place, as usual. Got some nice rolls. Some were even ones I needed to get. Thanks to low ELR and poor dice, several of my second-line squads turned into conscript mobs. Thanks to some good dice, many of them came back to try again.

Patch’s post-game analysis was that I’d been too cautious moving up around turn 4-5. I’ll have to go look at the logs to see what I did.

Hmm. A decade and more ago, my besetting SFB sin was timidity. I’ve done pretty well with that. Now I’m battling that with ASL. Not too unexpected, I’m still trying to get a feel for just how risky various actions are. I think the end game, where I was forced to really try screening moves and various tricks like that will help me play a better maneuver game in the future.

Still got a long ways to go before being worth more than a 6+1….

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Go East (not-so) Young Dwarf!

by on June 19, 2006 at 8:50 am
Posted In: MMO

Dire Maul East that is.

Not the guild’s best outing ever, but we’re still at about level for DM-East with our current equipment, and there was only four of us in the party (Dunain, Blanc, Brunev and Blondiewood). Given that, we did quite well indeed.

This was actually our second visit to Dire Maul. Our first involved sneaking in, having Dejek pick the door for DM-West, going in while the player switched from Dejek to Brunev so we could visit the library and Brunev could pick up his quest for better conjured water. We got caught in a couple of fights we didn’t want in the courtyard, and therefore some deaths (darn elite ogres…).

This weekend’s visit was smoother in that part as Blanc and I had a much better idea what to expect. Once inside… well it was a lot different from what I was expecting. Lots of plants (elementals). Big ones. Little ones. Annoying ones. Patrolling ones. And generally close together enough for us to need to take some time pulling them away from each other.

And during all this, we get to try to run down an imp who seemed to think he was the Gingerbread Man. In the end, he didn’t do any better.

We continued through until the first truly nasty boss: Zevrim Thornhoof. He’ll occasionally teleport a party member onto an altar, which will do a lot of damage while the character can’t do anything. Meanwhile, Zevrim’s still beating up on the rest of the party. Actually, occasionally isn’t a good term. He does it pretty often, once he gets warmed up. This is bad enough (it hurt Blanc pretty bad when he got picked), but he put Blondiewood (Druid and main healer) on the altar twice in a row. After that, the fight went slowly downhill until he and Blanc were all that was left, and neither had much health.

I’ve seen Blanc come back and win some pretty tough fights that really looked like he shouldn’t be able to win. I’ve seen him scrape through on no health and no help. Of course, I’m probably just remembering the exceptional times. But it was still disappointing when Blanc didn’t pull it off.

Worse, when we got back in the instance, the monsters at the front were just starting to respawn. So we had to quickly fight our way through and race ahead of the wave of monsters tracking our previous progress. It wasn’t that hard, but is was a couple of tense minutes, since we could have ended up with an uninvited guest in the middle of of fight.

The second fight went much better. So we were off to the courtyard that we’d been above and circling around at the beginning. It’s effectively an overgrown open area with a lot of groups of monsters/plants wandering around (which had been driving the Hunter-dar crazy earlier). Blondie stealthed her way up to the center and talked to the one uncorrupted ‘ent’ in the place, who took off and tore down the door we needed. Getting across the room ourselves took a little more doing. Not that it that difficult, but it looked difficult.

Once there, it was on to the final boss, and possibly the most tragic loss of the run. All along the way are little seed pods, they do random, possibly nasty, things (like rooting you in place, not helpful if you trip it during a fight) – though it looks as if once a character has interacted with them a few times, he starts getting the better results (items for a good cooking recipe). Anyway, one of the last ones rooted – and killed – Blanc’s warbunny. Certainly the silliest death of the run.

The actual final boss fight went well enough. After that, we climbed out the back door and headed back in. Into DM-West that is, and the turn-in for Brunev’s quest, and a very handy high-level ability. After that is was off to turn in the other, less important quests.

Took us about 5 hours, 3-4 wipes, plus one almost-wipe (single surviving member). Not at all bad for a four-man group.

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