Rogue Week - Pinkie Gets Her Moment!

I know this is really, really late as Rogue week was about 3 weeks ago in Laeleiweyn's Alt Appreciation calender but I decided to write anyway - I'm not so good at keeping up with these blog projects but I am going to finish this one! I'm also away from my PC right now so no interesting screenshots of my rogue but I'm sure you can picture the pink pigtailed female gnome so you'll get the idea I'm sure!

My Rogue was my 2nd ever alt and was also the 2nd one to reach level 80. I've spoken about my guild breakup before & my Rogue was my go-to alt when I needed space. She dinged somewhere in Stormpeaks on July 4th 2010 and I almost immediately put her away and have never seriously played her since. She is or rather was my herbalist so during Cataclysm, she spent a lot of time swimming around Vash'jir. I say she was my herbalist as I've recently converted her to Engineering - she was the only alt that it made sense to lose a profession on and I really want that Sky Golem mount!

Why did I pick a gnome and why a Rogue? Well, I remember thinking she could hide in things easily especially with her stealth too and I was right! She even ends up inside jars when doing Archeology! One of my favorite things to do on her is a bit of basic PvP - I load up my weapons with the slowing poison & spam Fan of Knives - I don't get many killing blows but my team mates love me :)

She's also the alt I take out when running guildies through lowbie dungeons - before they changed The Stockade, she was the perfect AoE killing machine for all those humans in there dropping linen.

This time round, she's stuck in Halfhill. She has a very basic farm there and she's been handing in meats for Ironpaw Tokens - as it's a quest hand in too, she earned enough XP to hit level 86 and I've also done a little pet battling on her so she's almost level 87 now. Will she hit 90 before the next expansion - I hope so! I have it in my to-do list along with my neglected priest too - I just have to find my mojo to play her.

Pinkie Lookalike

She is my lucky mount alt though - she won the Headless Horseman's mount in my 2nd year of playing and she also got the Brewfest Kodo & Ram the same year. She was the first one with the bronze Dragon from Stratholme and if I remember correctly, she's the only one who's even seen the Time Lost Proto Drake!

Early on, she was a banker alt too - long before I ever knew what that was! She was just the unplayed alt who stayed in town so she got to do all the running around there! I did take her out & about a lot for a while - as my Alchemist, she was the first alt to dabble in Archaeology for the Vial of the Sands mount. I then realised I wanted the achievement for all profession slots maxed on one alt so I swapped Archaeology to my Main and guess what? Yup - my Rogue got abandoned again!

She's one of my favorite alts to hang around on though - A pink haired gnome on a chopper or a mammoth mount is so funny to me and I love using the Kodo mount around town too. Now that we have account wide mounts, I have been having great fun just changing mounts to see which ones to put on her toolbars! It's the little things that make me giggle & a pink haired gnome on a mammoth has to be one of the silliest moments in game!

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A Basic Guide to Getting Started in Hearthstone

It's been a bit quiet round here lately - between working to get ahead of myself in the office before my vacation & playing Hearthstone, I've not really been writing much. I'm actually in USA right now visiting friends which also doesn't help as all my screenshots are on my PC at home! I do still have Hearthstone access though so I thought I'd write about that today!

Getting Started in Hearthstone

Blizzard have made getting started in Hearthstone very easy - there is a premade Mage deck waiting for you and some familiar faces of WoW to challenge you in the tutorial games. Leave the sounds on at this point & read any tips, read the cards & listen to cues as well. The tutorial seemed a bit lacking to me - it does give you the most basic info but perhaps they could have done just a few more.

Practice Mode

Once you've completed the tutorial matches, you get to choose Practice or Play modes. Arena becomes available once you have all the decks opened. You also have the opportunity to open up card decks for the 8 other classes available and as each one has a different kind of playstyle, it's definitely worth opening up various decks.

To open a deck, you use your basic Mage deck to play any of the AI classes in Normal mode - once you beat that class, the basic deck opens for you. I used the Mage deck to open all the classes as I was familiar with it and it made life a little simpler whilst I was learning! I played a fair bit of Practice mode to start with - it got all the decks open for me and gave me a taste of what was possible and available in those other decks.

There's also a bonus for beating all the AI classes in Normal mode - I think it's 100 gold and there's another 100 gold for beating them all in Expert AI mode. There is a bonus for getting your first deck to level 10 - I think it was a booster pack and another 100 gold for getting all 9 classes to level 10.

Custom Decks

By the time you get all the decks open & available to you, you will probably have worked out that the auto built decks aren't that great! Don't worry though - you can custom build your own decks from the cards in Your Collection. On the main screen that offers Practice, Play or Arena modes - you will see 'Your Collection' button below that, along with the Store, the Quests/Achievements & Open Packs buttons.

You will see the Druid deck page first but along the top is a row of icons, one for each class so just choose the class you want to build a custom deck for & click that icon. There's also a neutral icon which has all the basic cards available to every class (circled in red in screenshot!) - easily missed if you don't see how to flip the pages of the card collection 'book'!

If your deck isn't level 10, you will open up a new card every 2 levels so that will be 5 new cards (and 2 of each type too) by level 10. All you have to do is to click an empty box on the right hand side which will name your deck as Custom *x class* and then go through and click which cards you want to add to your deck.

You can only have 2 of each card in your collection or in your deck so when you do start getting booster packs, you will get duplicates. These can be disenchanted into dusts to craft a card you haven't got but by the time you get enough dust, you won't need me to tell you how! It's not a quick process, let's put it that way!

Building Decks

Building a deck is easy clicking to pick cards but your own playstyle & certain classes will determine which cards to choose - anyone can click the cards they like to use but the best players can build a deck that all works together. I still have a long way to go on that score! I'm still working stuff out & listening to Cold's advice about deck building. You can see his Basic Mage Deck build and if you read through - you'll begin to see how/why he chooses each type of card. Cold is also helping his co-host Rez with deck building and you can read about Rez's experiences over at his new Hearthstone blog - Hearthstone Card Factory

There are loads of sites springing up with recommended deck builds, with all sorts of varying results but as a starter, you may find it better to use one or two good builds and try to build your own based on those. It can be frustrating to keep losing but try to use what you are learning - even if you are getting hammered, the other player has put together a good deck or a good combination of cards - try to pay attention to those & use it yourself in your next match.

Play & Arena Modes

Play mode has two forms - unranked & ranked. I always play unranked to do my dailies and to level my decks. It just gets too disheartening to keep losing more & more games as you move up the ranks! I still have so much to learn & I feel more comfortable winning a few now & then to keep my spirits up so I stay unranked.

Arena is a whole other kettle of fish! You pay 150 gold to play for starters and that takes time to build up unless you get your credit or debit card out to pay $1.99 for each Arena attempt! The very first Arena attempt is free from Blizzard though and you will get a booster pack from it, regardless of your score.

When you enter, you get to choose one class from a selection of three then you are presented with a deck building screen - this shows you 3 cards at a time & you get to choose one. There doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason behind which cards you are shown to choose from nor which order - get the most important ones the first time you see them then fill in any gaps.

I think you need to know what could turn up and have a deck build in mind when doing this - which is why I'm still avoiding Arena as I'm still learning cards! But I'm also a bit of a scaredy cat when it comes to new stuff - I know some total newbies who've just jumped straight in & are loving it!

Each Arena entry costs 150 gold or $1.99 real money but you get to play up to 11 games - it finishes when you have 3 losses or 9 wins. I've yet to see my 3rd win in any attempt but I regularly get 1-2 wins now which is a definite improvement over a month ago! You are guaranteed a booster pack for each Arena entry regardless of the score but the better your score, the better the gold & dust rewards are & if you make it to 9 wins, I think you are guaranteed a second booster pack or a golden card in your prize.

Summary

So there you go - some basic stuff to get you started in Hearthstone. It is still in Closed Beta for the moment but there are waves of beta keys being sent out almost everyday it seems so hopefully, if you haven't got yours yet it should only be a matter of time now. Once I get a deck or two that I feel is good enough to share, I'll be posting them here for you. I don't intend being a Hearthstone blog but it may get that way for a little while until I get bored of it! I hope this helps a bit but most of all, have fun!

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I'm So Late! Priest Week

So Laeleiweyn had a great idea and Alt Appreciation Week was born. Almost two full weeks ago now was Priest Week so I'm really, really late posting about my Priest but I've been at a total loss for what to write! During Priest Week, I didn't even log in to do her daily Tailoring cooldown. It hit me today as I was snoozing between alarms that maybe I've been avoiding her!

My Priest was my 3rd alt to hit level 80, back during Wrath. I even remember exactly when she dinged - it was our August Bank Holiday weekend here in the UK and I was alone in game after a Spring/Early Summer of guild drama. Not long after she dinged though, I rejoined my current guild and added a Holy spec to try healing for guild runs. My guild was lovely, with lots of new faces & rebuilding after the near collapse but I didn't know anyone very well anymore & I really sucked at healing - Forge of Souls was a total nightmare but I got there eventually!

Then we come to Cataclysm - the bane of many of my alts it seems. I've already told you about the really sucky Paladin run through Grim Batol but there were many sucky runs through Cata dungeons, including some healing ones on my Priest. I did have the sense to stick to Guild runs on my Priest - I knew I didn't have it mastered yet & I didn't have the courage to face LFD players.

I did do some PvP battlegrounds as a healer & quite enjoyed it. I think I felt less responsible, less exposed to criticism perhaps? I don't know. I have a feeling now, looking back, that my moods & depression affected me more than I ever realised during Cataclysm which is strange because I really enjoyed some of the zones.

I clearly remember the awe I felt as I went through Vashj'ir for the first time and what a fantastic job the designers & artists had done there. I know many people don't like the zone from a playing perspective but if you've ever fancied having a go at scuba-diving, go and just 'sit' around in Vashj'ir for a little while. It really can be that colorful, serene and amazing!

So now here we are in the next expansion, Mists of Pandaria & my Priest isn't even level 86 yet. She's about 85 3/4's at the moment but it's been so long since I played her, I had to re-do my toolbars completely! I've swapped to keybinds since I last played her so it really is a learning curve all over again! I will get her to 90 though - she's part of my to-do list after all, I just don't know when or which spec will have priority.

Just looking at the screenshot I took of her - I have a feeling I'm going to need to transmog her soon too - I love that staff even if it is just a common old green piece quest reward! My only other transmog is my Draenei Hunter & she's in lilac - I'm sensing a theme here, you know?

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Dearest Lyssith - Paladin Week

Blue Drake - Flying High

It's Paladin Week in Laeleiweyn's Alt Appreciation calendar and as my main is a Paladin, this should be easy right? Well, yes and no - the thing is my Paladin is not only my main, she's my very first ever toon so as of this week, she's four years old and we've done almost everything together. She's my achievement queen, my mount collector, my first love in game and these days, the wayward child I'm almost tempted to give up on!

Albino Drake

It all started so innocently - I chose human as a race and Paladin because of Sparhawk & Kalten - two main characters in David Eddings books, The Elenium & The Tamuli series. I love all the David Eddings books but Sparhawk is a grumpy old man wearing armor & armed with a healthy shield of sarcasm & cynicism and for some strange reason, that has always made me like him more! So once I chose the class & race, I needed a name. I wanted Lessa - the main female character in Anne McCaffreys Dragonriders of Pern series but that wasn't available so after about 20 minutes of thinking, I came up with Lyssith or Lyss as my friends and guildies call me in game.

Brewfest Kodo

I started playing just before Brewfest started and had no idea about any of the holiday events but the following year, I'd learnt a lot more about the game and set out to get as many achievements as I could. One of the very first special mounts I managed to acquire was the Brewfest Kodo. I'm cheating a bit here as I actually got it on my Gnome Rogue first and it was only with the arrival of account wide mounts in Mists that Lyss could finally ride her dinosaur! She did get the Brewfest Ram though so it's not totally cheating!

Leveling during Wrath was fun but kind of slow too - as my first character, I had no heirlooms, very few add-ons and no clue where to quest next or even really how to play well but I managed. As part of the gearing up process back then, grinding dungeons for the various reputations and currency was normal so when I stumbled across the Oracles in Sholozar Basin, it was just another reputation that needed grinding. I was super lucky though and once I'd hatched my first or second Mysterious Egg, I was rewarded with the Green Proto Drake, much to the chagrin of my guild mates!

Green Proto-Drake

I learned to tank and spent many hours in ICC as off-tank for my guild as well as running guildies through dungeons. I started working on Achievements seriously at this time including the Argent Tournament. I never quite finished that though so it's still on my list! Running all those dungeons did have their rewards though - the Blue Proto Drake and the Blue Drake both dropped for me quite early on - apparently in those days, the Gods of RNG liked me & Lyss!

Fast forward a year or so and I was struggling to adapt to the changes wrought on my Class by the Cataclysm - I hated the Holy Power mechanic and I'd lost my guild too. I did find another, by the name of Bloodthirsty Meercats which I joined just for the fantastic name! It was being run by 4 teenage Danish lads but at summers end, they all graduated to higher education and had to give up WoW to concentrate on their studies. By this time, my old guild was almost derelict so I re-joined and my Meercat guildie Ben soon joined me there.

All through that first winter of Cataclysm, I tried, I really tried hard to master the Holy Power mechanic but it just wasn't happening and after a particularly nasty hour in Grim Batol, I pretty much gave up on Lyss. We did grind the Wintersaber Trainers reputation before it changed so this beautiful cat became mine and was my main ground mount for a long while.

Winterspring Frostsaber

After that Grim Batol experience, I retreated mostly back to the Auction House but I did run quite a few dungeons on my other alts. None came close to my Lyss though so for the remainder of Cataclysm, Lyss & I ground our way through reputation after reputation - Sha'tari Skyguard for the Nether Ray mounts, Netherwing for the gorgeous Netherwing Drakes and the Kurenaai for the riding Talbuks - I absolutely love the White War Talbuk! Purple is my favorite colour and he is so regal! Look how proud & tall he stands!

White Riding Talbuk

So that brings us to Mists - a new chance to fire up my Zygors leveling guide, raise alts and explore new lands and that is exactly what Lyss & I did, straight out of the gate. She was the first to open up her farm and reach Exalted with various Pandaren factions but I still struggled with the Holy Power thing - she felt so squishy that doing the Golden Lotus dailies was a real chore. We struggled on though, after all, she owed it to the others in my team to get those Commendations to make their struggles easier and she is proud to be my Achievement Queen. She nags me constantly to keep trying, I have tried to ignore her & promote one of my other alts to Main but I always come back to her in the end.

If you look at my to-do list (on the tab at the top) you'll see a long list of things she wants to do before the next expansion but she has given me permission to get the others leveled too - she knows I need some 'alt time' occasionally. Dearest Lyssith, my demanding first love!

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Random Stuff is Random!

Guess who couldn't think of a topic for today? Well, actually I could but none of them would have made for a whole post so I'm gonna lump them in here all together & be a bit random for a change! This blog tends to be a bit random anyway so it should fit in nicely!

Milestone Interviews - I launched this last week on my other blog - it's kind of aimed at non-blogging goldmakers in the community but if any of my lovely peeps here want to join in, you'll be more than welcome! I've had a few interviews submitted already, the first will be going live tomorrow. I'm pretty excited by this mini-project - now I just have to work out how to get the shy ones to send their interviews in!

Paladin Week - yup - my main is a Paladin so I'll be doing a full Paladin post in the next day or two - she's my Achievement chaser, my first ever alt & still my favorite so I'm trying to work out which bit to write about for that post!

Hearthstone - Blizzard have just announced they are going to do a 'wipe' which basically means that all my progress over the last few weeks will be reset back to fresh meat level. I know I'll have the knowledge to get back to same level again (which isn't that high anyway to be honest) but it kinda feels like a waste of time playing now until after the wipe. That's good news for WoW though - maybe now, I'll log in and actually do something other than Auction House & cooldowns! If you're interested in Hearthstone, my friend Cold is a long time, very experienced Card game player & has written a couple of posts over on his blog. The Starter Mage Deck is the one I started with on his advice and it works really well.

Real Life - work is going great - I really like my boss even if she drives me a little crazy now & then. Got some niggling health stuff to sort out but nothing major and finally, after 18 months on the market, my house has sold! Yup - I'll have some cash out of the sale & the first thing I'm going to do is fly out to see my friend! It does mean I'll miss the Blizzcon London weekend meetup but hey, I need his hugs more!

Monk Week - I kinda got distracted by Hearthstone again last week so I totally missed Monk Week. I do have a monk - she's been level 5 since about 3 days after Mists went live! I was seriously put out when I couldn't send her any heirlooms straightaway so she got shelved until further notice. That was a full year ago now! I did pop in and get her to level 8 this morning but it's Paladin Week now so I guess she'll be sitting around for a while longer. Why Tishamaru? One of my old Etsy friends has a beautiful Siamese cat called Maru & her sister is Tisha - probably the most photogenic pair of cats I've seen in a long while & not only do I have a fondness for Siamese cats - it's vaguely Asian too!

Blogging! - as if I didn't have enough to do, I've been invited to contribute to a new site (along with a few other known bloggers) which I've accepted AND I've started a new one of my own. Once everything is running smoothly on that, I'll tell y'all a bit more about it but I want to polish the edges a bit more first! Oh and in my usual scatterbrained fashion, I have a great idea for another one too! Eeeek!

My Fav Guildie - I did log into WoW last night, intending to do just a little bit of crafting but my Fav Guildie was online & we started chatting (as usual!). He noticed I didn't have my new trinket from the Timeless Isle yet so he dragged me off to go get the Burning Chest across the broken bridge. We hit it lucky and the mobs were almost all dead so I just ran in & got the chest - one Trinket & a Burden of Eternity later & I was a happy bunny! On the way back, we stopped to join in on a Huolon(sp?) kill & he summoned the Tiger rare nearby for me too. He's pretty much been living on the Isle as far as I can tell so it was easy to pick up a couple more Rares to kill for the quest. I'd forgotten how much fun it is to do stuff with other players & once I reforge, gem & enchant, I think I may be pleasantly surprised with my Paladin. Big {{{hugs}}} for Ben - apparently I don't talk about him enough here - do you think this will keep him happy? lol

Okay, time to get back to my alt-hopping ways - got a Paladin post to wrestle with & I need screenshots! Got to discipline myself not to log into Hearthstone though - it is kinda addictive once you get going you know!

Have fun y'all, talk soon xxx

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Say Hello to Fyzz - My New Mage

Fyzz!

Yup, after all my expressed dislike of playing a Mage, I felt that it was time to give them another try thanks to Laeleiweyn's Alt Appreciation project! To be honest, Fyzz has been around a while but with 3 days played, she was still only level 2 - shows how much time I spend in the Auction House though! So late on Friday, I made a last minute decision to send all my cloth heirlooms to her & give this whole Mage thing another try.

As of this morning, she is now level 10 and I have no idea what spec to choose! I've always gone Frost in previous incarnations so perhaps I should try one of the other specs but which one? She does look pretty in her heirlooms though and as I haven't played a Mage at all since Mists arrived with all the changes that brought plus I'm now using keybinds more, I'll probably keep her going for now.

I think the highest I've got a Mage to previously was mid level 20's but as my character slots fill up on my main server, I tend to delete them to make space for new alts. I've leveled a Priest to max level before & my Warlock is in her 50's but for some reason, I've always found the Mage to be particularly squishy. One incarnation died about 6 times in 20 minutes over near Thelsamar and needless to say, she got deleted rapidly that evening!

This time though, I have about 6 or 7 heirloom pieces for Fyzz so I'm hoping she won't be quite so squishy! With all the blogging & playing of other alts though, I don't think she'll be leveling very quickly unless something magical happens and I fall in love with her!

So why Fyzz for a name? Well, she's a gnome & she's a Mage - she needed something expressive to go with all the whizzbangs & flashy spell effects of a Mage so I thought Fyzz was appropriate especially as I'm such a bad Mage, most of my spells fizzle out before reaching their target!. If I had to give her a family name it would be something like Flashmaker or Fireblaster but as I don't Roleplay at all, that's just a bit of fancy.

Next week is Monk Week and so far my female Pandaren Monk has only made it to level 5 in the first week of Mists, I don't think I've even logged her since! I'm planning on leveling her a bit for Monk Week though so it gives me yet another excuse to send Fyzz back to the Auction House for a while longer!

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Pet Battle Addons - Warcraft Pet Foundry Carnival

Thanks to Rez for organising another carnival I just have to join in with! The very first Warcraft Pet Foundry Blogging Carnival topic is Pet Battle Addons. Now I'm still very much a newbie when it comes to pet battles & at the last count, I have only 2 pet battle addons. I have however, just read Rez's post for the carnival & I have a feeling I may have a few more addons to manage once this carnival goes live! lol

I initially downloaded PetBattleMaster and I still use it all the time. It tells me which pets I haven't collected yet & how many of each I have already. When I enter a battle in the wild, it colors the border around the enemy pets so I know if one of them is rare quality. It gives me a little summary box of all 6 pets although I still don't recognise most of the icons instantly!

Here's the description from Curse

• Team view with quick selector and portraits of your mighty teams

• Team manager docked to the pet journal showing all pets of all your teams

• Tabbed view with details about the pets in a duel

• Colored border according to the rarity of a pet

• Information about the damage modifiers of the pets

• Notifies to catch a pet, if it's missing in the player's journal

• Notifies to catch a pet, if it's quality is higher

• Tooltip information whether a pet is missing (incl. Minimap)

• Many other features following 

The second addon I have is courtesy of Rez again! He spent so much time talking about pet breed ID's that I knew nothing about, I had to go with his suggestion for the Battle Pet Breed ID add-on. I'm still learning which breeds are best in what form but once I know what I'm looking for or at, it has come in very useful - especially at the Auction House! When I'm buying pets and there is more than 1 for sale, I can buy the one with the best breed rather than just buying the cheapest & hoping!

I think once I get all the Tamers finished and start doing some PvP then I'll need Pet Battle Teams too! At the moment, I only have 3 level 25's so they are usually on duty to help boost my lowbies. I've been focusing on getting my gold machine ready for patch 5.4 though so none of them have had much use lately. But Pet Battles and all those lovely achievements to work towards are on my latest big To Do List so once the patch chaos dies down, I'll be settling down to some serious battling!

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WoW TCG Ceasing?