Starcraft 2: Wings of Liberty

I am in love.

As much as I consider WoW to be the best thing that ever happened, I've always preferred the Starcraft universe over the Warcraft one. Sadly though, Starcraft is old and got out-dated graphically; Warcraft 3 kinda stepped in at this point and blew it out of the water. When all the other kids were levelling their heroes, I was kicking ass with a level 30 Thorns Aura in Diablo II and having my ass kicked in Starcraft. Good times.

Oddly enough, even though Zerg were my class of choice back in the old days, I greatly prefer the Terran and the Protoss of SC2 so far, if the beta is anything to go by. The Protoss in particular have really caught my eye (shut up it's not because I'm a War of the Worlds fangirl shut up~♥), and not just because the Mothership is way overpowered. ;)

It plays so much like the old Starcraft that I literally could get all my techtree improvements sorted, throw together a couple of half-assed armies (groups of twenty-four! Finally!) and beat up the AI whilst ogling every detail of the map and new units.

It's made me look forward to the release even more. Can't wait!

Farming for Rivendare's Deathcharger

Something I enjoy more than anything in WoW is collecting mounts.

The mount that started this happy little obsession of mine was the Phoenix mount. Arguably one of the most eye-catching and appealing mounts in the game, I decided that I wanted this ride and would do what I had to to get it. A second, often glossed-over reason was for roleplay purposes; I of course enjoyed playing as blood elves, and can you get much more Sin'dorei-y then a big flaming phoenix? I didn't think so. To cap it all off, my main character's surname is Benu -- which happens to be a form of Egyptian phoenix.

I found out about the Ashes of A'lar long after I decided on Amphi's final name, so I often joke around and call it a freaky little act of fate. :)

I did some research on it, and found out that it drops in a raid, Tempest Keep. My heart fell a little as I found this out -- I'm not much of a raider at all. The upside to this downside was that it encouraged me to find other mounts I could collect, including Baron Rivendare's Deathcharger.

Due to it being usable by both Horde and Alliance players, this mount is often farmed for by players on both sides -- Hordies collect it for its rarity, and Alliance collect it as it is the only skeletal horse available to them (that I'm aware of). It used to be considered one of the rarest drops in the game (this was well before my time in WoW), but has since had its drop chance upped by a fair bit. I thought that this mount would be a good place to start my rare-drop collection with.

I first ran Stratholme with Amphi around level 60, with a couple of guild-mates and a 70 shaman who was helping us along. I wanted to get a feel for the instance as soon as possible, and luckily my guild back then contained a fair few members who did most of their levelling by running instances. I was invited along to Stratholme one evening, and breaking my tradition, I readily accepted and made my way there.

Let's Get to Farming!

The main goal of this post is to share my experiences with farming for this mount, particularly as I was not level-capped when I started, I hadn't read any guides and had to learn from scratch the ins and outs of the Rivendare Run. :)

The instance itself is both very long, occasionally very trying and a little unusual in that it is divided into two connected halves. Most people farming for the mount almost always use the eastern entrance, skipping the first half of the instance entirely. An experienced player can start from this gate and have the Baron dead within ten minutes. However, you do need the Key to the City (dropped by Magistrate Barthilas) to use this gate. That means that if you've never run the instance before, simply start at the normal entrance and, using this map, take a left at the first t-junction and follow the 2s. There is a gate where the furthest right 2 is -- go through there, and the Magistrate should be right there. Kill him and get the Key of the City so that you can use the eastern gate (also called the service entrance) from now on.

I started soloing the Baron when I was mid-70s in level with my hunter. It is relatively easy to do, but some important things to remember (if you're a hunter!) are:

-Don't try farming this place at a lower level unless you're very well geared and comfortable playing a hunter.
-Only bring a Tenacity pet with you if you are good at remembering to turn off Thunderstomp! This will save you having to nuke groups of mobs that your pet accidentally pulls -- in Strath, it will happen.
-Avoid as many groups of mobs as possible. This will not only help you finish the run as quickly as possible, but it will also help keep you alive!

I personally always used my cat whilst farming here, before I was level-capped. I was very comfortable using it as a pseudo-tank, and if I needed to stop and fight, I could pop a Mend Pet and focus on burning down single targets as quickly as possible. If you're level-capped, then the pet that you decide to use is really just personal preference, as you shouldn't have to worry about fighting at all in Strath at 80.

In order to open the gate that leads to the Slaughterhouse, where the Baron is holed up, you first need to bring down three ziggurats along the way. They are laid out in a triangle formation; this map shows the locations. I had no particular pattern as to which order I killed the three bosses in (Nerub'enkan, Baroness Anastari, and Maleki the Pallid) as it doesn't matter.

For Baroness Anastari, dismiss your pet. Fight her either at range or in melee, but dismiss your pet for this fight, as she will mind-control either you or your companion. Every time I forgot to dismiss Serenity, she'd end up mind-controlling me, and Serenity would end up dead. I'm not sure if she goes after specific players for specific reasons, but I do know that needing to stop and resurrect your pet is costly, both time-wise and mana-wise.

The other two bosses can simply be nuked. Nerub'enkan will often root you to the spot using the characteristic Nerubian web, but as a hunter, this of course isn't an issue! Maleki the Pallid can simply be burned down.

Now, killing the bosses is not the important part. To open the gate to the Slaughterhouse, you must enter the ziggurats that the bosses were guarding and kill the mobs inside. This is easy and quick, as they aren't elites. A message will appear in your chat log once the zig's down; once all three have been taken out, the gate to the slaughterhouse will open (it's roughly between Nerub'enkan and Maleki) and you can move on to the abominations.

The abominations can be tricky. If you brought a Tenacity pet, now is the time to switch Thunderstomp back on. Essentially, round up as many as you're comfortable taking on. Kill them all, except one. This is a time-saving tip! When you're down to the last abomination, put your pet on passive and kite the mob to the doors of the slaughterhouse, which will be shut. Kill it there, which will then open the doors momentarily. Go into the Slaughterhouse then and kill Ramstein. Almost immediately after Ramstein goes down, a group of skeletal guards will appear. They are elites, but usually not too much trouble to kill. If in doubt, throw down an Explosive Trap and a Snake Trap, pop a Mend Pet, then Feign Death and let your pet do the hard work.

When these are dead, you can finally take on Baron Rivendare. Make sure your pet has Growl on and send it in, keeping Mend Pet up on it. Focus on making sure your pet keeps aggro, rather than nuking the Baron. Every once in a while he'll stop attacking and start summoning minions -- this will be announced in the combat log, and when you see him start the act of summoning (he'll be surrounded by a purple aura, just like a warlock), drop a Volley on him to take down the skeletons as soon as they rush to him. Just keep Mend Pet up, stop your normal rotation to Volley whenever the Baron stops to summon, and Feign Death if you pull aggro. You should have little difficulty, and with much luck, hopefully you'll have a new rare mount to call your own. :)

I have seen this mount drop twice in my time playing WoW; the first time was my very first run (I lost the roll to a guildie -- what are the chances!), and the second was twenty-five Baron kills later, when the Deathcharger finally dropped for me. I'm helping my brother farm for it now (who plays a 70 Enhancement/Restoration Tauren Shaman) and the Rivendare Run still never gets old for me.

At 80, this is an easy and fast way to kill some time if you're waiting for a heroic, a raid, or just bored, especially if you're an Alliance player -- the promise of an unusual mount for you is great incentive to try this out. It helps that Stratholme is one of the most fun and lore-centred instances out there, in my humble opinion!

This is a brilliant video by the guys at TankSpot that shows what needs to be done, and how quickly and efficiently it can be done:



Happy farming!

♥

Customary introduction post! ♥

I suppose this is where all people start when it comes to blogs, really. That slightly awkward initial post where you know exactly what you want to say, but don't know how to put it down. I'll start with the most obvious!

Enter WoW!

I have been playing World of Warcraft since November of 2008 (not long at all, I know *hides*); my first toon was a Tauren Druid named Hathor. I've played Blizz games for much, much longer, and although I was always more of a Starcraft/Diablo II kind of person, Warcraft 3 still appealed for it's own little reasons. Reason one -- it had Tauren. I've never been any good at any RTS games, but Tauren were the sole reason I started wanting to play Orcs more and more in custom games against the AI (and I still always lost!). Naturally, when I upgraded from WC3 to WoW, I just had to roll a big hairy cow-person-thing, and after reading the little manual included, I hovered between playing a hunter or a druid; eventually the appeal of being able to turn into a multitude of animals -- and the fact that I would be able to get a taste for each role in the game -- caused me to decide on a cute, black'n'white spotted she-cow drood called Hathor.

While I love being able to explore the entirety of the Warcraft maps without fear now, nothing compares to those first few weeks! Stepping out into the big, bad world that was Mulgore, making sure I didn't take a single step off of the road to Bloodhoof, gawking at the amount of dead baby toons along the way, that feeling of awe the first time I entered Thunder Bluff (and the sudden appearance of 'Trade' in my chat log was mind-blowing)...memorable times.

Levels passed, and I found myself favouring cat-form over any other. I loved being able to sneak around as a big, goofy-looking horned lion, pouncing and shredding my enemies before slipping back into the shadows. However, as much as I loved Hathor, something seemed to be missing from the game. It was around this time when I returned to Thunder Bluff one afternoon for drood training, having run from Camp Taurajo in the Barrens after spending hours trying to find the stone I needed for my cat-form quest, that I spotted a Blood Elf hunter fishing at the pond in the city. While I had seen many before throughout the game, most of them never caught my eye; they all seemed to have the same pets -- cats or wolves or bears -- and never stood out as anything immediately and extremely interesting to me. I did a double-take with this belf, however....

She had a giant orange flapping thing as her pet! How bizarre!

I had no idea what a dragonhawk was, as I'd never seen on before. I thought it was the coolest thing I'd ever seen -- something that awesome must surely be rare and hard to tame! I stood next to the pond with my eyes glued to Flamewind the dragonhawk for a good ten minutes while she fished, my mind completely and utterly blown.

I eventually tore myself away to get my training and log out, but that level 33 belf with her dragonhawk pet stayed with me for another twenty-so levels, and many weeks.

I managed to convince a friend of mine to start playing as well, as he had been filching my account whenever he visited to mess around on his low-level undead rogue. We both decided that we wanted to start two new characters together on a roleplaying server -- we spent ages deciding what we would play, how we would play them and when we would play them. We settled for two Blood Elves, as I had been idly studying their lore on WoWWiki, and it appealed to me greatly. I took this as an opportunity to finally try out a hunter; I wanted to roleplay a snotty, bratty, vain, obstinate, and irritable character, who never got his hands dirty -- therefore, he had a pet to do all the hard work for him in fights, whilst he stood back and sighed impatiently, or idly fired off a few arrows before getting bored. My friend would play his sister, a drunken, man-hating, thieving, mentally-unstable rogue. Oh the adventures that awaited!

I finally bullied Friend into letting me roll my hunter, even though he wouldn't be able to create his rogue until he had sorted out some internet issues. I didn't need to spend long on what he looked like -- with the image I wanted fully formed in my head, I dove head-first into creating a character that was as pale as can be, with long white-blonde hair, with a young and grumpy face. I also knew exactly what he would be named. My penchant for naming my characters off of animals and lesser-known mythical creatures kicked in, and Amphisbaena Benu, the pissed-off belf hunter was born into the world of Steamwheedle Cartel.

Skipping ahead to the subject of pets, the thing that truly defines a hunter! I had no idea the amount and variety of pets that could be tamed, and I certainly didn't know about the three trees -- Ferocity, Tenacity, and Cunning. I finished my hunter quests at level ten, and was thinking about something really awesome to tame as I ran back to Silvermoon to check out this 'stable' thing I had heard about. I made a last minute decision to tame a level 7 Springpaw Stalker as I went; after all, I was a hunter and certainly couldn't be seen running around with no pet, for shame!

I always name my pets the first thing that pops to mind. So I slapped down the tag of 'Serenity' on this cat and made my way to the Farstriders Enclave in the city, glowing with smugness and pride at the sight of that little red lynx running astride me through the streets. I've played Amphi for a year and a month now, and Serenity is still with me. ♥

As I was levelling I learned of the different pet trees, and made up my mind that I wanted at least one of each. At the recommendation of friends I tamed a turtle for my tank-pet, and named it Squish. I was instantly aware that it didn't have nearly the same damage output as my cat had, and initially wondered if taming this beast was a smart move or not. It didn't take long for me to see that, no matter how many mobs I pulled while questing, Squish the turtle could grind through them all without taking too much damage -- something a cat couldn't normally do. Tenacities, and turtles in particular, now hold a firm place in my heart.

I could never get into Cunning pets much. I'm not a PvPer, and although Cunning pets are said to be 'the best of both worlds', they never seemed to have the staying power or damage output I was looking for. Despite the fact that they're almost never used, the only pet in this tree that appealed to me was a Spore Bat named Nebula -- although that could very well be because they're so pretty to look at, rather than because of any usefulness.

Now at 80, I've settled on my five pets, not just for their practicality but some also for collector's value: Zenith the Spirit Beast (it took me three months to find my lazurkitty! Strictly a collector's pet), Dusk the Chimaera (part collector's pet, part awesome PvP pet), Squish the Warp Stalker (he's evolved over the months!), Smiles the Devilsaur (this was originally King Krush, but I foolishly abandoned it in order to temporarily tame Gondria....he will be mine once again!), and of course, Serenity.

Amphi was levelled as a Beast Master hunter. The original reason for this is actually roleplay purposes; BM definitely seemed the way to go for a pompous idiot who has his pet do everything for him. Marksman actually appealed to me more in the early days, but I was determined to stick through with my choice. I grew to love it as a spec -- I loved having a powerful pet, I loved being able to break away a little from the glass cannon role while levelling, and I was dead excited about the final talent in the tree, Beast Mastery, as I had no idea what kind of creatures fell into the 'exotic' category.

Amphi is now dual-specced Beast Mastery (61/10/0) and Markmanship (7/57/7). I spend most of my time in BM (admittedly it's to show off Loque'nahak much of the time!) as I enjoy soloing content, working on achievements and farming much more than instancing or raiding. I also use it as a pseudo-PvP spec, even though I'm terrible at it! I switch into MM whenever I'm raiding (which is very rarely) and when I run heroics. I would eventually like to try raiding in BM, although Amphi is poorly geared and can barely crank out decent DPS in MM as is. ;)

In the last few months I've rekindled my interest in healing (thanks to my Draenei Priest, my original Steamwheedle toon), and I've transferred Hathor over to my main server, renamed her Takala, specced her for Restoration/Feral tanking and chucked her into the fabulous guild I'm in! Never looked back. The new random dungeon tool has made levelling her and learning to heal and tank a dream come true, and I can't get enough of it.

Enter fishkeeping!

Of course, my life isn't governed by WoW! Another important and passionate hobby of mine is fishkeeping, despite how few fish I actually own. I only have two relatively small set-ups running at the moment, due to lack of space -- a bowfront 25L with a dark blue VT Siamese Fighter named Stavros Flatley, two 'special needs' Neon Tetras (they are not from good breeding stock unfortunately. They are also the last two survivors of an outbreak of NTD) and two Peppered Cories (a male and female, respectively named Pongo and Purdita). I am keenly aware that this isn't a good set-up for these particular fish! My little tank was a Christmas gift from years ago; then stocked with three Neons and a big red VT Fighter. The two cories were purchased a month afterwards on a whim, and now that I finally may have enough room for a large tropical community set-up, they'll be getting the space and school they need. :) Stav will finally have that tank to himself.

My second set-up is a 120L Juwel with two fancy goldies, and two Weather Loaches. This again is a bit of a tight fit, although the tank has been up and running for nearly two years now, with not a single problem. Once again -- space permitting -- I hope to upgrade their tank to something as large as possible, as goldies are quite addicting. The larger of my two loaches (a male named Stan) is a closet escape artist, and a real pain sometimes. ♥ The second, Ollie, is much more hyper-active in general, but has yet to make an escape attempt.

There are particular fish I'm idly studying towards keeping in the future, even if it's still many years off. Some of these include a large set-up of Tanganyika cichlids (I've got my eyes on keeping frontosas someday), any Amazonian biotope (there's nothing quite as stunning as a well-done discus tank!)...and, of course, a koi pond.

My wish-list with animal-keeping also incorporates birds, reptiles, and various insects and arachnids. I've always had dogs and cats growing up, and horses were a large part of my childhood.

Well, I'm happy with that for a first post in Heals & Hyenas! :)

Until something interesting happens,

Ran~♥