Nine Muses

Despite having company this weekend, I managed to earn a number of achievements.  I didn’t do much, or it doesn’t feel as if I did.  I did my usual Argent Crusade and Frenzyheart dailies.  I did a little PvP.  I ran through a few instances.  I saw a fair number of achievements explode onto my screen.

Wintergrasp

I did finally go to Wintergrasp.  It was crazy! I decided not to risk jumping into a vehicle yet.  Though I’ve read up on the zone, I don’t feel I have more than half a clue about how things work, so I decided to run alongside and guard vehicles.  We didn’t win, but I did get to see a fair amount of how things worked, I think, and I nabbed the Destruction Derby achievement as well as these Stone Keeper’s Shards for the daily quests.  I’m not clear on what those are for quite yet, as opposed to the usual BG tokens, but I have some.

I ran a couple Arathi Basins and one more Wintergrasp and they were all total… uh… they were crazy cubed is all I can safely say.  I don’t think anyone cared about winning, only about getting HKs or maybe we were just up against premades.  People don’t talk in BGs except to insult each other’s abilities, it seems.  Maybe I’ve just had bad luck lately.  Anyway, we were totally steamrolled.

Culling of Stratholme

Sunday afternoon, I decided to risk a random, and it… wasn’t good.  At least, it didn’t start well.  I popped in and see that it is the Culling of Stratholme, and my party is nowhere near me.  There’s a tracker at the top of the screen that says 9/10 undead waves done.  I’m a little nervous, because my appearance after the instance started means they must have lost a DPSer already, and none of the reasons I can think of for that are particularly pleasant.  I tell the group I haven’t seen the instance before and I’ll try to catch up to them.  After this and that, I do.

Well, on the very first trashy pull, we wipe.  (Well, I didn’t die — that’s what Vanish is for — but you get the gist.)  And then the healer apologizes, says she isn’t good enough to heal this, and leaves.  And then the tank disconnects.  So here we are, three DPSers, in the middle of an instance with no tank and no healer.  And the group leadership for some unknown reason defaults to me.

One of the DPSers is a shadow priest, who says she’ll switch to healing.  We get another couple of DPSers right away (shaman and moonkin).  I’m not sure exactly when that happened — it might have been before the tank disconnected.  Unfortunately, we are still without a tank.  After sitting there for a good five minutes with nothing happening (And I’m trying to remember, if I ditch, will I have to wait a further fifteen minutes to try again?  Or do I just have to outwait the original debuff which only has four minutes left.) I ask over the TBC channel and a very nice Hroth says he’ll come help us out.

Now, back at the beginning, when I said I didn’t know the instance, no one else said anything about it at all.  And now that Hroth joins us, everyone else speaks up and says they haven’t been here before.  Well, I think one person didn’t say anything, but certainly no one was speaking up about what had or hadn’t been done, except me who was making assumptions based on that tracker thing and what my Atlas addon had to say about the instance.  Nice Hroth takes the lead and we finish the rest of the instance with very little fuss or muss.  I get my two Emblems of Triumph (Only 228 more to go!) and some gold.  There weren’t any rogue-y drops to speak of, unfortunately.

Later, Graen and Sera went to do old world Strat, and cleared the live side fairly handily.

I wonder if the maps are the same.  I’ll have to remember to compare later.

Trial of the Champion

In an effort to get Sera geared adequately (more on that tomorrow), we also had some nice friends run us through Trial of the Champion.  We were unable to find a fifth, so we decided to go ahead and try it with four.  It went fine.  I think Graen died once (which, I guess, isn’t all that fine).

I found the jousting a little confusing.  I know how to do it well enough, but I hit the wrong target once and then spent a while trying to decide if I should kite the mob until someone was free to help (as she was beating me to bits) or … something else.  I’m not sure what.  As I think about it now, it seems you couldn’t run it like a usual fight.  The tank has no taunt ability while on a mount.  I’d guess the goal would be focused fire on one target at a time until they’re all taken out.

The reason for going was to get gear for me (or for Graen, who needs the help too), but it seemed all the drops were plate until the very end, when the Shoulderpads of the Infamous Knave dropped.  I asked permission to need them, and then did, and now have nice purpley shoulders.  Dekae also sent me a gem for the socket (to help with my apparently deplorable hit rating).

And the big thing I learned from those instances runs — I need macros for assist and Tricks of the Trade, and I need to use them.  I have assist hotkeyed, but I found that trying to target the tank, even when it was my focus target, and then hitting that key lost me valuable reaction or damage time.  I have the macros made now (for assisting my focus and for putting Tricks of the Trade on a particular person) so we’ll see how that goes next time.

Other Things

I also finished the Ironforge Valiant quest, and started on the gnomes.  This earned me the Exalted Champion of Ironforge achievement.

I earned the Winds of the North achievement when I reached Exalted reputation with the Alliance Vanguard.  I’m not sure if there’s much benefit in this for me, as I don’t recall any of their rewards being especially needed, but that did bring me to 7/10 exalted reputations for the next overall reputation achievement.

I finally looted 1000 gold and earned the Got My Mind On My Money achievement.  I’m curious to see how quickly this will happen for a lower level alt or a new character starting from scratch.  I think this is one of those achievements that wasn’t retroactive when the system was put in and that’ll change when in a character’s career it is achieved.