elanashunter

[elanashunter]

Scenes from Azeroth: On the Kun-Lai Summit

The blonde yak mount is just insanely cute in action.

[elanashunter]

Stop! Panda time!

Elanas...er, well, she became a panda.

In character, of course, it doesn't work that way. Elanas has retired for non-martial pursuits, and Yonglu is one of those pandaren who left the Wandering Isle some years ago, who's now getting into responding to the new war and the chance to see Pandaria and all that. But in deep inner soul, it's Elanas into Yonglu. :)

I am loving the heck out of Mists, and making good progress.

[elanashunter]

Scenes from Azeroth: Burning for You

Apologies for the general absence of posting - I spent several weeks getting reinfected with some junk, but the problem's under control now, it seems.

I really love the look of destruction warlocks these days.

[elanashunter]

Scenes from the bucket list: Birdie!

Woo hoo! This is one of those things I've sought on and off ever since Magister's Terrace opened, on various characters. And now, thanks to account-wide mounts, it's done for all.

I am very, very happy about this.

[elanashunter]

Scenes from Azeroth: Afternoon fishing

There are times when I like nothing so much as firing up podcasts or an audiobook and working on fishing a while.

I'd like to note that it's very unusual for me to turn on display of cloaks. I almost never find cloaks as interesting to look at as the body pieces they cover. But this one caught my fancy.

[elanashunter]

Me and my alts

One nice thing about getting so very much of my long-term wish list done is that I had time and interest in poking at alts.

I really love casters, in pretty much every fantasy game. The single greatest drawback of Cataclysm, for me personally, was finding warlocks (my first class to take to level cap, back when) genuinely beyond my abilities to play at endgame and others impaired, difficult, or just not that much fun. It was therefore really deeply relieving to find that my beloved warlock is again within my grasp, and the other casting classes all seem to have fun options too.

There's a special level of wish fulfillment for me in the elegantly garbed wielder of powerful forces. I can't really envision myself as a warrior or anything like that, but magic? If it worked like that? Sure.

What I also found, in the last week and some of working hard at my alts, though, is that overall, Elanas remains more fun for me to play right now. She gets me to more game fun and goals with less fuss. I'm more powerful in game when I play her. I like to think that I'm not deeply obsessed with maximizing power beyond the level of "a reliably good solid contributor to the group's success", but the fact is that after an expansion or two in which so much of what I liked doing got marginalized, it kind of does matter to me.

What I also know is that there'll be a point in Mists, or rather several points, where I want a change of pace. WoW expansions run on longer than the developers want, for various reasons, and so there'll be stretches where there's just not much fresh to do with any single character. That's when my casters will get their time in the spotlight. What makes me happy right now is knowing that they'll do well, when that time comes.

[elanashunter]

The Bucket List Revisited

Now that patch 5.0.4 is out, where do I stand? TL,DR: In a great place.

Pets, Combat Dept.

Got my fen strider, don't want a basilisk, got a tenacity sporebat and a ferocity shale spider...life is good.

Loremaster

There's a new Loremaster of Pandaria achievement, but it turns out you don't need it just yet. The consolidation of activity into account-wide bucketry meant that Elanas inherited Loremaster thanks to the work of several separate characters. Woot!

Professions

Elanas is maxed out. Alts are coming along.

Reputations

Ohhhh yeahhh. I am well stocked, thanks.

Mounts

Ditto here.

Pets, Companion Dept.

Here too. 

Raiding

My guild plugs along. I'm happy to take part. It's been busy and disjointed weeks lately, so not a lot in the way of achievement hunting, but that's fine. I'm having a good time.

In short: Things are so good with Elanas that I have a lot of comfortable time to poke at alts.

[elanashunter]

Scenes from Azeroth: Quel'danas again

Why, yes, actually, I really do like the Isle of Quel'danas' scenery.

[elanashunter]

About water striders' Surface Trot ability...

It works for riding, too. (You can even renew it while mounted! When a hunter mounts up, her pet goes on passive, but its action bar is still clickable!)

[elanashunter]

Scenes from Azeroth: The first thing I did in 5.0.4

[elanashunter]

Scenes from the Bucket List: Foxy

I've been killing foxes on the Tol Barad Peninsula ever since the first ones hit level 85, hoping for the fox kit companion. No luck on that ever, so when I read that in the new patch they'll be for sale for 200 Told Barad marks of commendation, I was glad. So there I was doing dailies to earn some marks, and I thought, well, it costs me nothing to try a few more foxes on the side...and there it was at last.

So that's another thing done.

[elanashunter]

Scenes from Azeroth: Is this trip really necessary?

Elanas is a woman of the world. She understands that duty is sometimes unpleasant, and she accepts that leaders look at issues they may not have time or opportunity to fully explain to their subordinates. But then there are times she thinks that perhaps retiring to a small arm somewhere near Moonhaven and spending more time in healthy elven forests would beat....well, say, Ironforge cooking quests.

[elanashunter]

Elanas gains an alter ego

I've always been a bit of an altoholic, and sometimes a lot of one. There are times, like now, when a single character dominates my attention almost entirely and happily, and times when I may have four or half a dozen characters all getting about the same attention. I'm expecting to remain in an Elanas groove for a good while, but I haven't been entirely neglecting my alts.

For one thing, I do like healing. My most experienced healer is a night elf druid; restoration druid healing feels deeply satisfying to me.

I've also started mucking around again some with balance spec. I've long been happier with ranged damage-dealing than melee, so there's that. I've never much liked the moonkin form, but then come the 5.0.4 patch I can glyph out of it into a nicely glowing rendering of the druid's own nelfy goodness, and that suits me fine.

Guild chatter gave me a hook to exploit for character development, too. I've seen a variety of dual-classed characters through the years, some played very well - that is, where the player has two characters of different classes who are established at the in-character level as the same person. One combo that I hadn't thought about for a long time, if ever, is hunter/druid. But when it come on, you could just about hear the light bulb spark to life over my head.

Now I have Moonlilies, restoration/balance druid, who shares MyRolePlay info with Elanas. :)

It was part of my background for Elanas that she's been around druids a fair amount since Archimonde's attack on Mount Hyjal, and that was ten years ago in game time now. Since the Shattering, she's spent a whole lot of time on the Molten Front. I figure that it makes perfect sense for some Druid of the Talon to have pointed out how much they already have in common and suggest she give new training a try.

So when screenshots featuring a druid show up, that's why!

[elanashunter]

Scenes from Azeroth: A rodent of unusual size

We had quite the heat wave locally and I spent a few days appreciating my air conditioner a lot. But back to WoW, and success in fishing up the giant sewer rat of Dalaran. Another companion pet I never had beore!

[elanashunter]

Scenes from Azeroth and French cinema

I feel like I must have noticed this before, but I have no recollection of it...

Karazhan, the haunted sanctum of the late archmage Medivh, is just about my favorite raid dungeon in WoW, as it is for a lot of people. The creators put an amazing amount of detail into it, and even now, half a decade and some since it arrived, I keep finding interesting new things in it. Today I was finishing off Elanas' reputation grind with the Violet Eye faction of mages, and so did a more thorough than usual clearing in search of everything whose defeat might give some more rep.

Almost nobody ever goes into the basement portion. There are only beasts down there, and one silver elite spider with unimpressive loot. So it's left largely to the occasional sightseer like me. And today I looked at the torch Elanas was standing next to...

...and burst out laughing.

This is one of the really famous images from Jean Cocteau's 1946 film La Bette et la Bête (Beauty and the Beast):

Someone at Blizzard put in just the right kind of nod to some classic visual culture.

[elanashunter]

A song to listen to while doing archeology.

[elanashunter]

Bucket List: Update

So, how far have I gotten?

Loremaster

Not much progress at all. I got distracted by other things, below.

Professions

All at 525. Done. Working on additional achievements when I feel like it.

Reputations

Exalted with 32 factions

Guardian of Cenarius

Diplomat

Ambassador of the Alliance

There is now no faction in game who'd award Elanas any more reputation for wearing their tabard. :) Next thing to finish: Argent Dawn reputation.

Mounts

Netherdrakes

Nether Rays

Traveler's Tundra Mammoth

Flameward Hippogryph

Still working haphazardly on the Ashes of A'lar, the Sethekk mount, and like that. But if I get no more at all between now and Cataclysm, I'll still feel very satisfied.

Raiding and Instances

No particularly dramatic progress; nibbling away at achievements here and there, and enjoying the company of guildmates doing it.

Pets

I keep experimenting with old friends and new ones among the combat families, but my core roster isn't changing much. 86 companion pets right now, and I do hope that sales of high-end leatherworking crafted items will let me buy some more. I will hit 100 pets when 5.0.4 is released and pet tallies are merged, though, so I'm not worrying about it at all.

Everything Else

I've now soloed the normal versions of Blackrock Caverns and the Stonecore, and intend to do more of that kind of thing.

Summary

I've done much less on Loremaster than I expected, but very much more on reputations, and I think it's a fine tradeoff. I can keep whittling away at old zones after Mists comes out, after all, but I will be glad to never, ever do some of those rep grinds again.