The Dark Iron and her Demon Dogs

The Harpy Household is getting rather hyped for Classic but in the meantime we’re still playing Battle for Azeroth.

My favourite of the new races has to the Dark Iron Dwarves, which given I’ve never managed to get a Dwarf beyond level 40 came as a surprise. Hunter was the obvious choice because I have always loved these dogs, in fact way back when in vanilla when they were actual demons, my Warlock used to use enslave demon on them so she could have one as a pet.

The first thing Emberflower did on joining the Alliance was make the long treck north to Tirisfal Glades to tame a sister for her blazehound. It’s a journey I’ve made many times as most of my baby hunters have tamed a cursed darkhound since Cataclysm made them accessible but this time seemed sadder than usual. Despite running from Ironforge, through Loch Modan, the Wetlands, Arathi, Hillsbrad, Western Plaguelands and into Tirisfal at a reasonable time of day, I saw three players in total. The world seemed deserted.

She will be leveling slowly as Mr Harpy wants to focus on Classic in our limited game time once it’s released but I want her to reach BRD level at least so she can get a puppy in another shade of red.

Spot: Saved!

I’d forgotten how brilliant Silverpine Forest and Hillsbrad were since they revamped the zones. Tansy seemed to zoom to level 35. I wasn’t sure whether I’d be able to save Spot at bang on level 35 but thought it was worth a try. As it happened, the answer was yes, level 35 is high enough to breach the wall of Theramore and to tame him.

As it turned out, this corner of the keep has no guards anywhere near and also did a good job of keeping my dognapping (sorry saving) from the eyes of passing Alliance.

Although even when I ventured out into the open, no one seemed at all taken aback by a small Goblin riding off with Spot. No wonder Theramore got destroyed given how lax about security they seemed to be.

Now to level to 110 for the Class Hall and to kill those Alliance peasants who failed to keep Spot (and Theramore) safe in PvP.

Operation Save Spot

Ever since Theramore was blown to dust and purple ash, I’ve wanted to make a Horde Hunter to save Spot from the flames.  Over the years, I’ve made a couple but they haven’t made it to level 35 required to tame Spot and got abandoned on no longer touched servers. This time though, I’m committing. Spot is being tamed.

I hadn’t played through the Goblin start zone since it was first unveiled so decided to  make a Goblin plus having already abandoned a Troll Hunter and an Undead one I thought something new might motivate me. It took less than five minutes to remember why I hadn’t played a Goblin since that first run through. I am quite partial to the zebra prints and the neon lights but the rest of it felt too much like I was playing another game entirely.

However, she’s now level 16 and counting, in Silverpine making money doing unmentionable and down right dubious things for the Forsaken. Hang on Spot… Tansy is coming!

Ever since I semi returned to blogging, I’ve been meaning to take part in Zeirah and Cinder’s blog challenge. I see it posted, think “ooh, I could write about x” and then proceed to forget about it for another week. This week however the topic is “Alts” and I’ve never managed to walk away from an Alt focused challenge yet.

Due to my anxiety when it comes to group content, these days I make a character, level it to the cap and then go and level the next one once I’ve run out soloable things to do. This means alts are not something I’m particularly short of. I’m not going to list all of them though because 50 would take up too much space and some of them barely get any playtime.

So in no particular order:

Priest

Snow was my original Priest, she slaughtered C’thun in his lair (well, okay she stood at the back healing a bunch of Night Elf warriors), she mind controlled Death Knights in the original Naxxramas and she stole Troll mojo from the dead in Alterac Valley. She’s dedicated to her faith, cold and a bit too fond of smiting the non-believers.

 

As soon as Gnomes discovered religion, I knew I needed a Gnome Priest. Sprout is hate-filled, fond of blowing things up and mindcontrolling people off cliffs, the bigger the drop the better. It’s debatable as to whether or not, she’s actually discovered religion or been infected by an Old God really.

 

My lowest level Priest, likes to pretending to be a Druid and exploring.

Warlock

Dorrie the little Witch, named for a series of books I loved as a little girl.

Erinys, my very first character on my own account. Crossroads camper, it’s a shame tents weren’t in the game at that time, Tarren Mill Terror and soul shard hoarder.

The name says it all. She hates everyone, especially human males.

 

Mage

Fire Mage, funeral rite enthusiast and cat lover.

 

Demon Hunter

 

Death Knight

Snow’s older deader sister.

Hunter

Hunter whose sole purpose is to “rescue” Spot the dog from the flames of Theramore by taming him.

My angry Gnome hunter who was made for mechanical pets but somehow decided that live (or at least alive at some point) pets were better than robot ones.

Druid

Harvest Witch, fortune teller and gardener. She likes nothing more than stealthing around the ruins of Gilneas tending to her roses.

My PvP resto Druid who needs to finish leveling.

My Troll, because everyone needs a Troll.

Monk

These are the characters that I spend the most time playing around with.

I daren’t go a-hunting

Up the airy mountain
      Down the rushy glen,
We daren't go a-hunting,

William Allingham

This week is Hunter Week and I have to be honest, I have a bit of a love/hate relationship with the class. I have a lot of Hunters of my own plus Mr Harpy played and raided on one for a couple of years. My Guild Master plays one and so do many of the people I like and admire in-game but I hate meeting them in PvP and my heart sinks slightly when I get thrown into a group activity with one or more of them. I think part of my issue is that I can’t take my own Hunters seriously which sometimes spills over to into other peoples plus I still have flashbacks to being one shot by Mr Harpy’s back in vanilla. Ok he had every buff on known to man at the time and I had less than 4k health with my own buff but it still rankles even now.

I really think if Hunters didn’t have pets, I wouldn’t touch them with a barge pole and there in lies the rub. I love running around taming things but really don’t enjoy the shooting bit.

Here is my eldest Hunter with her first proper pet. The one which inspired a story and had me camp in the Barrens on a PvP server as a baby Hunter.

For many of my Hunters, I have a been a bit predictable. I have far too many Night Elf Hunters littering the European servers, most of them lying there unplayed.

I’ve loved this cat model since forever. That’s why I tracked down Humar as a very small Hunter and got killed for the privilege by a Druid who should have known better. I was always envious of a Hunter in our guild who had enlisted the Horde to help him capture this version but at the time I never got a Hunter to a high enough level to acquire one until Wrath.

I made Twiceshy just so I could have pets called Oncebitten….. Surprisingly enough despite my professed hate for Worgens, she has grown on me.

My latest Hunter, SnowBlossom. Yep, she’s totally stolen Snow Blossom’s name in the hope that some of her awesomeness and coolness will rub off. That’s probably highly unlikely given me and my ability to play Hunters although back the bad old days I did over 2k on Terion Gorefiend by pressing one button on my husband’s!! She also needs to level to tame something other than a turtle.

I do have a few more lurking about, including a Goblin called Sproutz whose sole purpose in life is to save Spot however she’s been stuck in Kezan since the start of MoP and a Troll with bright pink hair with a pet called Huggles because who wouldn’t want to be bitten by huggles.

A Rose by any other name…

Okay, it’s not a rose but a poppy but…. artistic license and all. This is actually one of the many layers of wall paper we discovered when stripping the kitchen back to replace it. I’m not a great fan of wallpaper in general but I rather like this one.

This post was meant to be many things. It was intended to be my final post of Druid week (yes, my weeks are different to everyone else’s), it could have been my first Hunter post or perhaps I was going to actually do the <A Screenshot A Post> day by day as intended. However the server glitches have brought all those aspirations to a direct halt. My Monk is stuck in the Darkmoon Faire no doubt stuffing her face on fried goods and downing fizzy faire water. My Goblin Hunter is lost in the dark of Kezan and my Worgen was last seen stuck in Stormwind playing cards with  a Guard.

So given that I can’t post what I want to, I thought instead I’d talk about my aims for Hunter Week.

• I’ve wanted to save Spot, that poor puppy trapped in Theramore awaiting destruction raining from the skies for a while now but have never managed to level a Horde hunter high enough. This will change though.
• I’ve dabbled with making my Worgen Hunter a proper transmog multiple times but they’ve never got any further than MogIt. This needs to change.
• Make a Panda Hunter to replace the Panda Priest which I intend deleting.
• Make a list of all the pets I wish to tame.

Now hopefully, at some point this week, the servers will actually let me on and I can start ticking things off.

 

Twiceshy and the Big Green Bug of Happiness

Large green bug finally acquired! That’s one thing less to achieve before the patch comes rolling around. Now I just need to take him into a few battlegrounds and feed him Goblins.

A few of my Favourite Post-Patch Things

In no particular order:

1. Basilisks

I thought these would be a bit like crocolisks, i.e. really annoying as pets with their skittering little legs running after you but somehow their garish colours and whiskers have grown on me.

Staying with Hunter’s pets, up next is something I’ve been wanting to tame ever since they were first introduced with the Burning Crusade.

2. Water Striders

3. Being able to name my mini-pets. I’ve still got a long way to go figuring out names for all of them but I love being able to show a bit of their personality through a proper name.

4. Scarlet Monastery.

The re-make reminds me of those wonderfully bad Hammer Horror movies I grew up hiding behind the sofa watching re-runs of. I particularly like the fact that you have to pretty much “stake” Whitemane to try and ensure she stays dead.

5. Spectral Guise. Perhaps not for the reason that Blizzard would like to me to love this talent though. It has saved me a couple of times by cancelling spell casts but because it doesn’t work like true “stealth”, your pets remain visible and for some reason my Darkmoon Balloon drifting along seemingly by itself amuses me no end.

6. Glyph of Disguise.

Here we see my rogue masquerading as a rather fetching Harpy. Unfortunately it only lasts five minutes and breaks in combat but for idling there is nothing better.

So what is everyone else excited about this week?

Mog Busting – “Who ya gonna call!”

Started by Shoryl of Tiny WoW Guild, Mog Busting is the latest transmogrification challenge to sweep through the blogosphere. As I flicked through the various requests and results, I was secretly hoping someone would tag me and low and behold, tagged I was, by Effy of Effraeti’s RP.

Some Background and Requests – Feel free to show some skin!  I am fond of the Imbued Plate Armor chestpiece on her, but this is by no means a requirement.  What is far more important with Effræti is her Runeblade!  Either the sword or axe DK weapons from the starter zones, or anything else you can come up with in game that just screams – Runeblade!  Also, I am not fond of covering up my Draenei tails – so an outfit sans cloak is preferable.  

Effræti is most unlike her Shaman other half.  She bold and fearless, and unlike Effy, does not mind showing some skin as she has little concern for modesty or her own well-being.  A former Shaman turned Death Knight, Effræti is brutally to the point and slow to trust, but a fierce companion.

This turned out to be a lot harder than I thought it would be. I don’t have a high level plate wearer that I play regularly so I was driving blind. To make matters worse, I have all 50 character slots full so I had to go with a Deathknight I happened to have sitting half way through the starter zone.

In the end I came up with three different outfits, one for each of the items Effy mentioned in her request. With each outfit, I tried to make the named item the focal point, picking colours and materials which emphasised it.

The Greatsword of the Ebon Blade

I wanted to use both the two shades of blue and the bronze from the hilt as my main palette here.

• Chest: Vanguard Breastplate
• Shoulders: Burden of Mortality
• Gloves: Flash Freeze Gauntlets
• Legs: Templar Legplates
• Boots: Sapphiron’s Scale Boots
• Belt: Acherus Knight’s Girdle
• Sword: Greatsword of the Ebon Blade

The Greataxe of the Ebon Blade

• Chest: Unscarred Breastplate
• Shoulders: Pauldrons of Conviction
• Gloves: Magma Plated Gauntlets
• Legs: Greaves of the Iron Guardian
• Boots: Boots of the Funeral March
• Belt: Acherus Knight’s Girdle
• Axe: Greataxe of the Ebon Blade

Imbued Plate Armor

This definitely proved the biggest headache. I didn’t want to use the Imbued Plate set but finding a match that I was happy with from the random pieces was hard.

• Chest: Imbued Plate
• Shoulders: Elementium Deathplate Shoulderguards
• Gloves: Area 52 Engineering Gloves
• Legs: Ornate Leggings of the Venerated
• Boots: Talonguard Greaves
• Belt: Acherus Knight’s Girdle
• Sword: Runed Soulblade

Now that’s the hard bit over with, I’d like to challenge Chatmay of WoW Débutante to come up with something for my Hunter, Twiceshy.

She likes to tailor her outfits to her pets and since she’s about to head off on a mission to tame Chromaggus, she would love a suitable ensemble to wear out on the town with him.

When it comes to weapons, she’s most definitely a bow girl, crossbows if needs must but never ever guns. She is also quite partial to kilts but will also happily wear trousers or shorts.

Being ever so slightly feral, a side effect of being bitten and hanging out with animals all day long, showing skin doesn’t bother her at all. She doesn’t raid however, but everything else (i.e. not lv 85 raid content) is fair game.

Good Luck!

Burn Baby Burn – My Hunter’s Transmogrification Wishlist.

I made the wonderful mistake of downloading MogIt the other day and have been a bit obsessed with outfit hunting ever since.

This is the outfit I’m currently working on farming with my Hunter, Twiceshy. As she’s a Worgen I knew I wanted a kilt from the outset because I really don’t like Worgen legs in pants. She also pvps with a lava spider so I wanted something bright to match. I know it’s not particularly subtle but that’s what camouflage is for!

• Head: Crown of Destruction (Molten Core).
• Shoulders: Rocket Chief Pauldrons (Quest reward from Netherstorm but the Masterwork Pauldrons would work too).
• Chest: Triumphant Chestpiece (BoE green)
• Wrists: Vonderful Bracers (Quest reward from Stonetalon Mountains)
• Hands: Commandeered Gloves (Quest reward from Stonetalon Mountains but the Sparkleshell Gauntlets would do equally well).
• Belt: Masterwork Girdle (BoE green)
• Legs: Molten Earth Kilt (Mechanar)
• Bow: Sunfury Bow of the Phoenix (Karazhan)
• Feet: Triumphant Sabatons (BoE green – Although as a Worgen your shoes only show when you’re in Human form so most things would do).

Then once this one is completely collected, I have a whole stable full of pets to match up with outfits.