Whirly: good to go

Back to Mana Tombs to see just how far we can go. We can go exactly as far as the second boss Tavarok, big guy he. We tried him cold, with no pre-knowledge. He spanked us so hard we decided there was no need to try him again. What should we do? Lets take another look at Auchrtnai Crypts.

Our previous visit to Aurchrtnai Crypts didn’t go well, or long. This time looked to be just as bad. The mobs spawn ghost pets and what not. They ran us off again, initially. We gave it another try, and darn if we didn’t work it out. What fun. We had a great time. Each fight required concentration and our ‘A’ game. We had, I had, a blast. We continued longer than our regular Friday fight night, one impossible fight after another. We made it to the threshold of the first boss Shirrak the Dead Watcher, but didn’t give him a try, next time perhaps. It was my best evening in WoW for a while, a long while.

Ha! Pandemonius went from impossible to farm status all of a sudden. We returned to his home, Mana Tomb, to see if our first Pande’ kill was a fluke. Nope. We own him now, the punk. Still a long fight, but certainly doable. I picked up a new wand.

We cleared most of the next room then decided to reset the instance and kill Pandemonius again just for the loot. Mark’s Warrior received a nice pair of gloves.

Oh, we all dinged 69. It looks like our goal, 70 by Christmas, is a happening thing. We’ll be the last folks, who have played WoW since release, to reach 70. What an honor. I’m so proud.

What an odd evening. We started in Escape from Durnholde Keep. Those groups of four are still giving us hell. After a few deaths, we lost momentum and Mark suggested Mana Tombs. Our bad luck continued with more deaths. We painfully progressed until, clearing the first room, there was nothing but the boss Pandemonius left to try. No way we can succeed - He puts out just to much damage for our little group.

It was one long, hopeless, fight. Pandemonius was down to 8% when I ran out of mana. I was able to manage one more flash heal on Mark’s tank and damn if Pande’ didn’t go down. It was completely unexpected. Especially on such an otherwise crappy evening. I think we realized it was a fluke, except for Mark, who seems to have innate optimism I’ll never muster. Everybody should ding on our next foray. That should help with future attempts.

We beat Ghaz’an down to 8% before the last of us (me) died. We tried him again, but Mark had used his Warrior’s specials on the first attempt. We didn’t do as well. Maybe we can take him next level, or this, if we get a little lucky.

Underbog is our main go-to instance at the moment. It gives us two hours of challenging content, or at least it did until last night, when we skated through with little trouble, and poor drops. I don’t think we had more than two real fights before Ghaz. Mike suggests our recent success is due to a renewed commitment, and focus, on WoW. I think he’s right. We are playing sharp again. Our “A” game. Assuming we have one.

Hot damn! We hit an unexpected wall in Blood Furnace. We got past The Maker easy enough. The next boss, Broggok, done. We’d never tried the boss, Keli’dan the Breaker, before and had no idea what to expect. He was nothing special and went down easy. Then, well, nothing. We had finished all the bosses, and were done with Blood Furnace. No reason to return. None of the bosses drop anything we need. End of the line. Odd that, though I am bored with Blood Furnace, it’s a little sad to see it done.

Level 68 is working out well for us. We each received something new that is fun or interesting. Mark’s Warrior - Commanding Shout; adds an extra 1080 hp to everybody for two minutes. Mike’s Mage - Invisibility; reduces his threat and is a good way for him to survive those runaway situations that we get into. My Priest - Prayer of Mending; an 800 hp heal that jumps around up to five times.

I’m trying to find a way to use Prayer of Mending strategically. If it heals us two or more times, for 800 hp each, it becomes quite mana efficient. I can get into trouble if I spend too much time playing with it instead of straight up healing. If the mobs aren’t beating on Mark’s Warrior, I don’t have much time to dink around. Still, when timed right, or lucky, it’s a useful tool.

Ghaz’an, in Underbog, continues to frustrate us. I think we can do him though, with a little luck. Unfortunately, the higher level instances we’ve visited have bosses close to the entrance that we can’t get through either. it’s a hard life.

Another night in Underbog. Everyone was in good cheer. I found a web site with a list of popular harmonica songs. We spent a while, fighting our way to Hungarfen, trying to remember the tunes that went with the song names. Hungarfen’s two guards took us down twice, we’d not had trouble with them before, at least not for a long time. We finally broke through on attempt three. Hungarfen himself isn’t a problem now - just stay away from the mushrooms.

We then took an online test of our weirdness quotient while working towards Ghaz’an. It turns out, we are all on the high end of weird, and still unable to take Ghaz’an. Drops were good. I think Mark received plate arms that were an upgrade.

My Auctioneer broke with the newest upgrade. I fought it for a little while before starting a new database. It means I’ll not be working the auction house aggressively until I get some good numbers. That’s fine, though I trade in rares when I can get them, some of which don’t come up on the auction house often. I’ve got somewhere around 15000 gold. My goal was having enough for our 70 mounts, I’m not sure how much they cost.

We discovered how much is too much WoW. It’s exactly three times in four days. We played our regularly scheduled Friday, a pickup day on Saturday and again Monday night. Everybody was getting a bit snippy, in a friendly way. We had nothing to talk about. How could we when there had been hardly any time between. I ended up searching the web for jokes. That’s when things turned snippy. Is it my fault the internet isn’t funny?

Monday we hit Mana Tombs. That first boss, Pandemonius, is just terrible I tell ya. I’m not sure we’ll ever get through him. He puts out tremendous damage. Then a short visit to Sethekk Halls, a minor mistake, and then Auchenai Crypts, our intended target. We didn’t do well, that’s a polite way to put it. After an hour of failure, we popped over to Blood Furnace to do our old nemesis The Maker. He went down fairly easy. He dropped nothing we could use, as usual.

It was less than a winning evening. So much so we decided to play AoC on Friday. That’ll show em. We were all around 17 with our grouping toons in AoC. The plan is to meet up Friday at 20. I’m not sure I’ll make it. I’m not enjoying playing all that much. This gaming life is hard.

We’ve had a couple very productive sessions. Friday we entered Underbog expecting to end at Hungarfen as usual. Not so. The fight went very smoothly - surprisingly easy. He dropped leather, of course. It’s hard to believe we had trouble with him before. I think we could farm him if we wanted to, but looking at his loot table I see nothing we can use. We fought our way to, but did not succeed in taking Ghaz’an. We tried twice, once with no knowledge of what to expect, and once with a plan. I see discussions of his acid spit being a forward arc affair. We didn’t find that to be true as he was able to spit on Mike and me when we were well behind. Oh well.

Saturday we had an impromptu run at Hellfire Ramparts. We didn’t know how long we would be able to play so chose to do something easy. Watchkeeper Gargolmar went down easy, as always. Omor the Unscarred also melted to our onslaught. Vazruden, not so easy, though we got closer to taking him than before. I think, if we were able to try again, we’d of taken him out. Not to be. One try per customer. It’s hard to justify clearing the whole zone to try him again. It’s more a matter of pride now. His loot probably isn’t that useful.

We dinged 67 in WoW Monday, Slave Pens. I can almost smell 70. It feels like we should be pushing forward towards that goal. But once we hit 70 what? They say the new expansion will come out in November. We don’t want to be in the first wave of people in the new stuff. There are millions of level 70s. It will be crazy.

It seems we have hit the wall with what a three person group can accomplish in WoW. We are failing against the same bosses we’ve been fighting for, what seems like, forever. At 67 my Priest gets a new flash heal that is 60 hit points better than the one I was using. That’s not going to turn the tide of any fight. We aren’t uber because of our new 67 spell upgrades, that’s for sure. Burning Crusades has been a disappointment for our small group, something I keep bringing up, but we have no attractive alternative.